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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.
In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years or so been depicted as a white horse- or goat-like animal with a long straight horn with spiraling grooves, cloven hooves, and sometimes a goat's beard. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was commonly described as an extremely wild forest creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could be captured only by a virgin. In encyclopedias, its horn was described as having the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as a unicorn horn.
A bovine type of unicorn is thought by some scholars to have been depicted in Indus seal of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization, the interpretation remaining controversial. An equine form of the unicorn was mentioned by the Ancient Greece in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, Aelian, and Cosmas Indicopleustes. The Bible also describes an animal, the re'em, which some translations render as unicorn.
The unicorn continues to hold a place in popular culture. It is often used as a symbol of fantasy or rarity. Unicorn, Merriam-Webster Dictionary. In the 21st century, it has become an LGBTQ symbols.
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.Kenoyer, J.M., catalogue entry in Aruz, Joan (ed), Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, p. 404 (quoted) and 390 (terracotta), 2003, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), google books; Metropolitan Museum, "Stamp seal and modern impression: unicorn and incense burner (?)" ca. 2600–1900 B.C.", for harness. "Iconography of the Indus Unicorn: Origins and Legacy", in Connections and Complexity:New Approaches to the Archaeology of South Asia, 2013, Left Coast Press, , Google Books
Ctesias got his information while living in Persian Empire. Unicorns or, more likely, winged bulls, appear in 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" (ἰνδικὸς ὄνος). 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. Pliny the Elder mentions the oryx and an Indian ox (perhaps a greater one-horned rhinoceros) as one-horned beasts, as well as "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the Deer, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits in length." Also Book 8, Chapter 30, and Book 11, Chapter 106. In On the Nature of Animals (Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος, De natura animalium), Aelian, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse (iii. 41; iv. 52), and says (xvi. 20) that the (μονόκερως) was sometimes called (καρτάζωνος), 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. Manas: History and Politics, Indus Valley. Sscnet.ucla.edu. Retrieved on 2011-03-20.
Several European medieval travelers claimed to have seen unicorns in their travels outside of Europe. For example Felix Fabri claimed to have seen a unicorn in Sinai Peninsula.
The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as (Φυσιολόγος), 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 Sacred 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 Virginity; subsequently, some writers translated this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary.
The unicorn also figured in courtly love: for some 13th-century France 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.Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, 2002. Piero della Francesca, pp. 260–265.
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.
False alicorn powder, made from the tusks of or horns of various animals, was sold in Europe for medicinal purposes as late as 1741. 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 ivory or walrus ivory. Entire horns were very precious in the Middle Ages and were often really the tusks of narwhals.
In one of his notebooks Leonardo da Vinci wrote:
The famous late Gothic art series of seven tapestry hangings The Hunt of the Unicorn are a high point in tapestry manufacture, combining both secular and religious themes. The tapestries now hang in the Cloisters division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In the series, richly dressed Nobility, accompanied by huntsmen and hounds, pursue a unicorn against mille-fleur backgrounds or settings of buildings and gardens. They bring the animal to bay with the help of a maiden who traps it with her charms, appear to kill it, and bring it back to a castle; in the last and most famous panel, "The Unicorn in Captivity", the unicorn is shown alive again and happy, chained to a pomegranate tree surrounded by a fence, in a field of flowers. Scholars conjecture that the red stains on its flanks are not blood but rather the juice from pomegranates, which were a symbol of fertility. However, the true meaning of the mysterious resurrected unicorn in the last panel is unclear. The series was woven about 1500 in the Low Countries, probably Brussels or Liège, for an unknown patron. A set of six on the same theme, treated rather differently, were engraved by the French artist Jean Duvet in the 1540s.
Another famous set of six tapestries of Dame à la licorne ("Lady with the unicorn") in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, were also woven in the Southern Netherlands before 1500, and show the five senses (the gateways to temptation) and finally Love ("A mon seul desir" the legend reads), with unicorns featured in each piece. Facsimiles of these unicorn tapestries were woven for permanent display in Stirling Castle, Scotland, to take the place of a set recorded in the castle in a 16th-century inventory.
A rather rare, late-15th-century, variant depiction of the hortus conclusus in religious art combined the Annunciation to Mary with the themes of the Hunt of the Unicorn and Virgin and Unicorn, so popular in secular art. The unicorn already functioned as a symbol of the Incarnation and whether this meaning is intended in many prima facie secular depictions can be a difficult matter of scholarly interpretation. There is no such ambiguity in the scenes where the archangel Gabriel is shown blowing a horn, as hounds chase the unicorn into the Virgin's arms, and a little Christ Child descends on rays of light from God the Father. The Council of Trent finally banned this somewhat over-elaborated, if charming, depiction,G Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. I,1971 (English trans from German), Lund Humphries, London, pp. 52-4 & figs 126-9, , another image partly on the grounds of realism, as no one now believed the unicorn to be a real animal.
Shakespeare scholars describe unicorns being captured by a hunter standing in front of a tree, the unicorn goaded into charging; the hunter would step aside the last moment and the unicorn would embed its horn deeply into the tree (See annotations The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Fourth Edition, David Bevington, pg. 1281; The Norton Shakespeare, Second Edition, pg 2310, footnote 9; The Riverside Shakespeare, Second Edition, page 1515 of Timon of Athens, Act 4, scene 3, c. line 341: "wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury".)
Golden coins known as the unicorn and half-unicorn, both with a unicorn on the obverse, were used in Scotland in the 15th and 16th century. In the same realm, carved unicorns were often used as finials on the pillars of , and denoted that the settlement was a royal burgh. Certain noblemen such as the Earl of Kinnoull were given special permission to use the unicorn in their arms, as an augmentation of honour. The crest for Clan Cunningham bears a unicorn head. & tartans George Way, Romilly Squire; HarperCollins, 1995; page 84 "Cunningham CREST A unicorn's head couped Argent armed Or MOTTO 'Over fork over'
There is no consensus on how the unicorn became a gay icon. Alice Fisher, an editor of Observer Design magazine, notes that the values of a unicorn – as rare and magical – have resulted in the word being used with various connotations. However, she argues that the Victorian association between rainbows and unicorns has resulted in unicorns becoming a queer icon.
When directly asked, queer people give different answers about why they have close personal relationships with unicorns. They often relate to one or more of the following aspects: uniqueness, magical quality, elusiveness and gender fluidity.
Queer individuals tend to relate to the unicorn because of their unique sexual orientation and gender identity. A New Orleans journalist who identifies as queer, Tracey Anne Duncan, described her connection to unicorns when she watched The Last Unicorn as a child. In the film, the protagonist believed she was one of a kind throughout her life. Tracey was able to relate to that feeling, even though she did not really know what "her kind" was at that time.
The unicorn is an imaginary animal that lives in a world of myths and legends. Queer people, whose existence may seem to blur the lines between societal norms of masculinity and femininity, may feel like they do not fully belong in this world. It explains their interests in mythical creatures such as unicorns, mermaids, and fairies.
Some argue that the gender fluidity of the unicorn makes it a suitable representation of the LGBT community. In ancient myths, the unicorn is portrayed as male, whereas in the modern times, it is depicted as a female creature.
The translators of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible (1611) followed the Greek Septuagint ( monokeros) and the Latin Vulgate ( unicornis)Psalms 21:22, 28:6, 77:69, 91:11; Isaiah 34:7. The Latin rhinoceros is employed in Numbers 23:22, 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9–10 and employed unicorn to translate re'em, providing a recognizable animal that was proverbial for its untamable nature. The American Standard Version translates this term "wild ox" in each case.
The classical Jewish understanding of the Bible did not identify the Re'em animal as the unicorn. However, some rabbis in the Talmud debate the proposition that the Tahash animal (Exodus 25, 26, 35, 36 and 39; Numbers 4; and Ezekiel 16:10) was a domestic, single-horned kosher creature that existed in Moses' time, or that it was similar to the keresh animal described in Marcus Jastrow's Talmudic dictionary as "a kind of antelope, unicorn".
Beginning in the Ming dynasty, the qilin became associated with , after Zheng He's Treasure voyages to East Africa brought a pair of the long-necked animals and introduced them at court in Nanjing as qilin. The resemblance to the qilin was noted in the giraffe's ossicones (bony protrusions from the skull resembling horns), graceful movements, and peaceful demeanor.
Shanhaijing (117) mentioned the Bo-horse (), a chimera horse with an ox tail, a single horn, a white body, and a sound like a person calling. The creature was said to live at Honest-head Mountain. Guo Pu in his jiangfu said that the Bo-horse was able to walk on water. Another similar creature, also mentioned in Shanhaijing (80) and said to live in Mount Winding-Centre, was the Bo (), but it had a black tail, tiger's teeth and claws, devoured leopards and tigers.
The alabaster burial monument of Henry Manners, 2nd Earl of Rutland shows a hornless unicorn at his feet.
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