Unicorns

This creature prances through the glades and meadows of history, and has captivated humans for millennia. Explorers have long searched for it, as its crowning glory was sought by royalty and religious elites. Although commonly associated with western European traditions, versions of this magical creature appear across Eurasia in many different guises—but always identified by its defining feature: the single horn on its brow. This week, we speak of the unicorn.

Aquamanile in the shape of a Unicorn. Nuremburg, Germany. ca. 1425–50. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

THE FIRST UNICORN

Ctesias was a Greek physician who worked at the Persian court in the early fourth century BCE, treating King Artaxerxes II and his courtiers. He was widely interested in the world around him, including its natural history.

This curiosity is reflected in his Indica, a book exploring the cultures, customs, and folklore of India. It is within this text that we find our earliest reference to a unicorn, written around 398 BCE.

“Among the Indians … there are wild asses as large as horses, some being even larger. Their head is of a dark red color, their eyes blue, and the rest of their body white. They have a horn on their forehead, a cubit in length. The filings of this horn, if given in a potion, are an antidote to poisonous drugs. This horn, for about two palm-breadths upward from the base, is of the purest white, where it tapers to a sharp point of a flaming crimson, and, in the middle, is black. These horns are made into drinking cups, and those who drink from them are attacked neither by convulsions nor by the sacred disease. No, they are not even affected by poisons, if either before or after swallowing them they drink from these cups…”

Ctesias goes on to say that these animals are incredibly quick and difficult to catch, even on horseback. Now, Ctesias himself never made it to India, so he was basing his research on the reports of others, which suggests that the idea of a unicorn-like animal had long existed in the subcontinent. 

M-18 Seal Mohenja Daro. Courtesy of Harappa.com.

Aside from its striking appearance, the most remarkable aspect of this animal is the medicinal properties of its horn, an element of unicorn lore that, after Ctesias, reappears in later accounts of the animal. We find unicorns—sometimes called Monoceros or Cartazon—mentioned in the writings of Aristotle, Aelian, Caesar, and Pliny the Elder, and it’s interesting that they seem to describe two different types of animal: one resembling Ctesias’s description, the other representing a creature much bulkier and larger. Nonetheless, the common feature in all the classical references is the horn and it’s purported medicinal properties.

THE RELIGIOUS UNICORN

Unicorns become immensely popular in medieval Europe, and indeed are one of the most important animals in Christian iconography. The reason behind this may go back to a translation of the Old Testament, as an animal called the re’em has been interpreted as a unicorn in some versions. (And reem in modern Arabic refers to a gazelle.) Possible translation errors aside, this Biblical appearance cemented the unicorn’s place in Christian thought, and things were never quite the same for this magical creature afterwards! As unicorn lore continued to grow, some rather interesting ideas emerged, including tips on how to catch one. According to the medieval texts, one could only catch a unicorn with the help of a young virgin. The girl, sitting alone in the woods, would be approached by the unicorn, which would lay its head in her lap—at which point the hunters would burst out of the trees to capture or kill it.

Detail of a miniature of a knight spearing a unicorn, who lies with its head in the lap of a virgin. Bestiary. England 13th c. British Library.

This story is chock full of symbolic imagery and metaphor, even in a pre-Freudian age, but the two main players were typically connected to the Virgin Mary (the young woman) and Jesus (the unicorn). The tale of the unicorn hunt became a popular theme in medieval art, one of whose most beautiful expressions can be found in the Unicorn Tapestries, produced between 1495 and 1505 and now housed in the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Unicorn is Attacked (from the Unicorn tapestries) 1495-1505. The Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Cloisters.

The rich associations among the unicorn, Christianity, and notions of purity and innocence sacrificed, made this mythical beast a popular symbol in the medieval heraldry tradition. Most famously, the unicorn appears on the Scottish coat of arms, and is the national symbol of Scotland—chosen, it appears, because the unicorn was thought to be the natural enemy of the lion, the symbol of England. The British coat of arms includes both a lion and a unicorn—the latter chained! —a pairing that was meant to symbolize the union of England and Scotland since 1707. In times of strife between the two countries, political satirists often make use of lion-versus-unicorn imagery to highlight the conflict—imagery that is even found in an English nursery rhyme.

The coat of arms for the United Kingdom.

UNICORN MERCHANDISE

The belief in the existence of the unicorn was reinforced by the appearance of unicorn horns on the market, highly sought after by royalty and elites. The horns could be fashioned into drinking cups and other objects, prized for their purported ability to protect an individual from poison. The actual presence of these artifacts in the royal courts and church reliquaries of Europe seemed to eliminate any shadow of doubt that unicorns were real—at least until people began to search for their origin. Most of the so-called unicorn horns apparently came from the northern reaches of Europe, with Denmark a particular hot spot. In fact, the horns were actually narwhal tusks, “rebranded” in medieval commerce as something no less striking but much more magical!

Narwhal Tusks, c. 1900-1930. Christie's

Narwhals breaching in the North Sea. Wikimedia Commons.

THE LEGACY OF THE UNICORN

The lore of the unicorn has found new diffusion in 20th- and 21st-century pop culture. From books to films, from children’s toys to colorful hairstyles, unicorns seem to be as present and significant as ever.

Istock

But where did the idea come from? Which wild animals were our natural historians, explorers, philosophers, and religious thinkers confusing with this mythical beast? Some accounts describe an animal akin to the wild asses (the onagers, kulans, and kiangs) of Asia, others may refer to the Arabian oryx, or species of mountain goats found in the Himalayas, and a few seem to describe an animal that is on the brink of becoming as rare as the unicorn: the rhinoceros. The mythology of the unicorn is complex and at times confusing, but there are some common threads that run throughout. One is the idea that the unicorn represents the freedom of nature, something that is untainted by humans, at least until it is caught. The capture of the unicorn is the betrayal of innocence, the ultimate symbol of humans conquering the natural world.

‒ Dr. Carolyn Willekes

The Unicorn in Captivity (From the Unicorn Tapestries) 1495-1505. The Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Cloisters.

Dr. Carolyn Willekes has been a friend and valued contributor to Archaeology Now for eight years, both in person as a lecturer, and as an educator in classrooms, bringing her popular “On the Trail” story of the rodeo to thousands of school children in Houston. This year, during this uncertain time, we were pleased to welcome her back in electronic form for a series of blogs about human/animal interaction. She has contributed nine written blog posts and nine posts to our video mini-series. This unicorn tale is the last of this series, but certainly not the last of her contributions as we anticipate working with her again during the spring of 2021. We’re grateful to her for sharing her knowledge, expertise, and her obvious affection for her subjects with us!