Indus Valley civilization A creature with a single horn, conventionally called a unicorn, is the most common image on the
soapstone stamp seals of the
Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization ("IVC"), from the centuries around 2000 BC. It has a body more like a cow than a horse, and a curved horn that goes forward, then up at the tip. The mysterious feature depicted coming down from the front of the back is usually shown; it may represent a harness or other covering. Typically, the unicorn faces a vertical object with at least two stages; this is variously described as a "ritual offering stand", an
incense burner, or a manger. The animal is always in profile on
Indus seals, but the theory that it represents animals with two horns, one hiding the other, is disproved by a (much smaller) number of small
terracotta unicorns, probably toys, and the profile depictions of bulls, where both horns are clearly shown. It is thought that the unicorn was the symbol of a powerful "clan or merchant community", but may also have had some religious significance. In
South Asia, the unicorn is only seen during the IVC period, and disappeared in South Asian art after this.
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer stated the IVC "unicorn" has no "direct connection" with later unicorn motifs observed in other parts of the world; nonetheless, it remains possible that the IVC unicorn had contributed to later myths of fantastical one-horned creatures in
West Asia.
Classical antiquity Unicorns are not found in
Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of
natural history, for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of unicorns, which they believed lived in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The earliest description is from
Ctesias, who in his book
Indika ("On
India") described them as
wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a
cubit and a half () in length, and colored white, red and black. Unicorn meat was said to be too bitter to eat. ,
Susa, Iran Ctesias got his information while living in
Persia. Unicorns or, more likely, winged bulls, appear in
reliefs at the ancient Persian capital of
Persepolis in Iran.
Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the
oryx (a kind of
antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass" ().
Antigonus of Carystus also wrote about the one-horned "Indian ass".
Strabo says that in the
Caucasus there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads. In
On the Nature of Animals (, ),
Aelian, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse (iii. 41; iv. 52), and says (xvi. 20) that the () was sometimes called (), which may be a form of the Arabic , meaning '
rhinoceros'.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, a 6th-century Greek traveler who journeyed to India and the
Kingdom of Aksum, gives a description of a unicorn based on four bronze figures he saw in the four-towered palace of the King of
Ethiopia. He states, from report: They speak of him as a terrible beast and quite invincible and that all its strength lies in its horn. When he finds himself pursued by many hunters and on the point of being caught, he springs up to the top of some precipice whence he throws himself down and in the descent turns a somersault so that the horn sustains all the shock of the fall, and he escapes unhurt. The predecessor of the medieval
bestiary, compiled in
Late Antiquity and known as (), 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 emblematic tag that underlies medieval notions of the unicorn, justifying its appearance in both secular and
religious art. The unicorn is often shown hunted, raising parallels both with vulnerable virgins and sometimes the
Passion of Christ. The myths refer to a beast with one horn that can only be tamed by a
virgin; subsequently, some writers translated this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary. The unicorn also figured in
courtly terms: for some 13th-century
French authors such as
Thibaut of Champagne and
Richard de Fournival, the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin. With the rise of
humanism, the unicorn also acquired more orthodox secular meanings, emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage. It plays this role in
Petrarch's
Triumph of Chastity, and on the reverse of
Piero della Francesca's portrait of Battista Strozzi, paired with that of her husband
Federico da Montefeltro (painted 1472–74), Bianca's
triumphal car is drawn by a pair of unicorns. However, when the unicorn appears in the medieval legend of
Barlaam and Josaphat, ultimately derived from the life of the
Buddha, it represents death, as the
Golden Legend explains. Unicorns in religious art largely disappeared after they were condemned by
Molanus after the
Council of Trent. The unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, was well established in medieval lore by the time
Marco Polo described them as "scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant's. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... They have a head like a wild boar's... They spend their time by preference wallowing in
mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions." It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros.
Alicorn The horn itself and the substance it was made of was called
alicorn, and it was believed that the horn holds magical and medicinal properties. The
Danish physician
Ole Worm determined in 1638 that the alleged alicorns were the tusks of narwhals. Such beliefs were examined wittily and at length in 1646 by Sir
Thomas Browne in his
Pseudodoxia Epidemica. The alicorn was thought to cure many diseases and have the ability to detect poisons, and many physicians would make "cures" and sell them. Cups were made from alicorn for kings and given as a gift; these were usually made of
elephant or
walrus ivory. Entire horns were very precious in the Middle Ages and were often really the tusks of narwhals. == Entrapment ==