Drinking horn
horn of a bovid used as a drinking vessel
A drinking horn is the horn of a bovid or antler of an ungulate used as a drinking vessel. Drinking horns are known from classical antiquity, especially the Balkans. They remained in use for ceremonial purposes throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period in some parts of Europe, notably in Germanic Europe, as well as in the Caucasus. Drinking horns remain an important accessory in the culture of ritual toasting in Georgia in particular, where they are known by the local name of kantsi.
Cups made from glass, metal, pottery, and in the shape of drinking horns are also known since antiquity. The ancient Greek term for a drinking horn was simply keras (plural kerata) 'horn'. To be distinguished from the drinking-horn proper is the rhyton (plural rhyta), a drinking-vessel made very loosely in the shape of a horn, sometimes with an outlet at the pointed end.
Antiquity
Both in the Greek and the Scythian sphere, vessels of clay or metal shaped like horns were used alongside actual horns from an early time.
A Late Archaic (ca. 480 BC) Attic red-figure vase shows Dionysus and a satyr each holding a drinking horn.
“Drinking horn” enters the record as horn of a bovid used as a drinking vessel. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Drinking, horn and bovid can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q192771. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Drinking horn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.