Strabo says that in the Caucasus there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads. Antigonus of Carystus also wrote about the one-horned "Indian ass". Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx (a kind of antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass" (ἰνδικὸς ὄνος). Unicorns on a relief sculpture have been found at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in Iran. Ĭtesias got his information while living in Persia. Unicorn meat was said to be too bitter to eat. 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 (700 mm, 28 inches) in length, and colored white, red and black. 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. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer notes the IVC unicorn to not have any "direct connection" with later unicorn motifs observed in other parts of world nonetheless it remains possible that the IVC unicorn had contributed to later myths of fantastical one-horned creatures in West Asia. In South Asia the unicorn is only seen during the IVC period - it disappears in South Asian art ever since. It is thought that the unicorn was the symbol of a powerful "clan or merchant community", but may also have had some religious significance. 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. 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 mysterious feature depicted coming down from the front of the back is usually shown it may represent a harness or other covering. It has a body more like a cow than a horse, and a curved horn that goes forward, then up at the tip. Indus Valley CivilizationĪ 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. Indus stamp seal and modern impression unicorn and incense burner or manger (?), 2600–1900 BC. It is often used as a symbol of fantasy or rarity. The unicorn continues to hold a place in popular culture.
The Bible also describes an animal, the re'em, which some translations render as unicorn.
An equine form of the unicorn was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, Aelian and Cosmas Indicopleustes. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as a unicorn horn.Ī bovine type of unicorn is thought by some scholars to have been depicted in seals of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization, the interpretation remaining controversial. In encyclopedias, its horn was described as having the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could be captured only by a virgin. In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years or so been depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal with a long straight horn with spiralling grooves, cloven hooves, and sometimes a goat's beard. The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.
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