Unicorns

The unicorn is a legendary animal, known since ancient times for the single large, pointed, spiraling horn that grows from its forehead. For roughly the past thousand years, European art and literature have shown it as a white creature resembling a horse or goat, with a long, straight, spiraled horn, cloven hooves, and occasionally a goat’s beard. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was often portrayed as a very wild forest animal, representing purity and grace, and was said to be catchable only by a virgin. Its horn was thought to make poisoned water safe to drink and to cure illness.

In those same periods, narwhal tusks were sometimes sold as unicorn horns. Some scholars think a bovine unicorn appears on Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization seals, though this interpretation is disputed. The ancient Greeks wrote about an equine unicorn in their natural history accounts, with authors like Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, Aelian, and Cosmas Indicopleustes mentioning it.

Indus Valley civilization

The Hebrew Bible’s word re’em is sometimes translated as unicorn in certain versions. Today, the unicorn remains popular in culture as a symbol of fantasy or rarity, and in the 21st century it has become an LGBTQ symbol. A one-horned creature, commonly called a unicorn, appears most often on soapstone stamp seals from the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization, around 2000 BC. Its body is more cow-like than horse-like, with a curved horn that points forward and then upward at the tip.

A mysterious feature hanging from the front of its back is usually shown, possibly a harness or covering. The unicorn typically faces a vertical object with at least two levels, described as a ritual offering stand, incense burner, or manger. The animal is always in profile on the seals, but the idea that it represents a two-horned animal with one horn hidden is disproven by small terracotta unicorns (likely toys) and by profile depictions of bulls, where both horns are clearly visible. The unicorn is thought to have been the symbol of a powerful clan or merchant community, and may have had religious meaning.

In South Asia, the unicorn appears only during this period and disappears afterward. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer stated that the IVC unicorn has no direct connection to later unicorn motifs elsewhere, though it might have influenced later myths of one-horned creatures in West Asia. Unicorns do not appear in Greek mythology but in natural history accounts, as Greek writers believed they were real animals living in India, a distant and legendary place.

Classical antiquity

The earliest description comes from Ctesias, who in his book Indika described them as wild asses, fast-moving, with a horn a cubit and a half long (about 28 inches), and colored white, red, and black. Their meat was said to be too bitter to eat. Ctesias gathered his information while living in Persia. Unicorns—or more likely winged bulls—appear in reliefs at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis.

Aristotle likely followed Ctesias when mentioning two one-horned animals: the oryx (an antelope) and the so-called “Indian ass.” Antigonus of Carystus also wrote about the one-horned Indian ass. Strabo reported one-horned horses with stag-like heads in the Caucasus. Pliny the Elder mentioned the oryx and an Indian ox (possibly a greater one-horned rhinoceros) as one-horned, as well as a very fierce animal called the monoceros, with a stag’s head, elephant’s feet, boar’s tail, a horse-like body, a deep lowing sound, and a single black horn two cubits long (about 35 inches) from its forehead. Aelian, quoting Ctesias, added that India also produces a one-horned horse, and noted that the monoceros was sometimes called cartazonos, possibly related to the Arabic karkadann meaning rhinoceros.

The 6th-century Greek traveler Cosmas Indicopleustes, who journeyed to India and the Kingdom of Aksum, described a unicorn based on four bronze figures he saw in the King of Ethiopia’s four-towered palace. He reported that it was a terrible, invincible beast whose strength lay in its horn; when pursued by hunters and about to be caught, it would leap to a precipice, throw itself down, somersault so the horn absorbed the impact, and escape unhurt. Medieval knowledge of unicorns came from biblical and ancient sources, and they were variously shown as a kind of wild ass, goat, or horse.

Middle Ages and Renaissance

Several European medieval travelers claimed to have seen unicorns outside Europe; for instance, Felix Fabri said he saw one in Sinai. The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as the Physiologus, popularized an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary), stood for the Incarnation. As soon as the unicorn sees her, it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. This became a basic emblem.