Unicorn

This article is about the legendary animal. For other uses, see Unicorn (disambiguation). Not to be confused with Unicron or Unicon (disambiguation).

The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn on its forehead.

In European books and art, for about the last thousand years, the unicorn has been shown as a white animal that looks like a horse or a goat. It has a long, straight horn with spiral grooves, split hooves, and sometimes a goat's beard. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it was often described as a very wild woodland creature. It was a symbol of purity and grace, and people believed only a virgin could capture it. Writers of encyclopedias said its horn could make poisoned water safe to drink and could heal sickness. During medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as a unicorn horn.

Some scholars think that a unicorn of the bovine (cow-like) type was shown on seals from the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization. This idea is still debated. The ancient Greeks also mentioned a horse-like unicorn in their accounts of natural history by several writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, Aelian, and Cosmas Indicopleustes. Some versions of re'em, a word found in the Hebrew Bible (for example in Psalm 92:11 and Deuteronomy 33:17), are translated as "unicorn."

The unicorn still has a place in popular culture. It is often used as a symbol of fantasy or rarity. In the 21st century, it has become an LGBTQ symbol.

History

In the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization, around 2000 BC, a one-horned animal, now often called a unicorn, was the most common image on small soapstone stamp seals. It looked more like a cow than a horse and had a curved horn. Its meaning is unclear, but it may have been the symbol of a powerful "clan or merchant community" and may also have had religious meaning. In South Asia, this unicorn disappeared after the Indus Valley period. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer stated that it has no "direct connection" to later unicorns in other parts of the world, though it may have helped inspire later myths of one-horned creatures in West Asia. Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology but in accounts of natural history, since Greek writers believed unicorns lived in India. The earliest description came from Ctesias, who wrote in his book Indika ("On India") that they were wild asses with a horn a cubit and a half (700 mm, 28 inches) long, colored white, red and black. Later writers, including Pliny the Elder and Aelian, described other one-horned beasts. In the 6th century, Cosmas Indicopleustes described a unicorn based on bronze figures he saw in the palace of the King of Ethiopia.

In the Medieval period, unicorns were shown as a kind of wild ass, goat, or horse. The predecessor of the bestiary, called Physiologus, described a unicorn trapped by a maiden, which stood for the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation. Unicorns became common in religious art and secular art alike, symbolizing purity and faithful love. The unicorn is also said to be tamable only by a virgin. Marco Polo later described rhinoceroses, which he called unicorns, as very ugly creatures that spent their time in mud.

People believed that a unicorn's horn, called alicorn, had magical and medicinal powers. The Danish physician Ole Worm found in 1638 that these horns were really the tusks of narwhals. False alicorn powder was still sold in Europe as medicine as late as 1741, and cups made from alicorn were given to kings, often made of ivory from elephant or walrus.

Entrapment

One traditional way of hunting unicorns was to trap them with a virgin. In one of his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci wrote that the unicorn loved fair maidens so much that it forgot its wildness. It would lie down in a seated maiden's lap and fall asleep, and the hunters could then catch it. The famous late Gothic series of seven tapestry hangings The Hunt of the Unicorn is a high point of European tapestry making. Today the tapestries hang in the Cloisters division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In the series, rich noblemen and hunters chase a unicorn against mille-fleur backgrounds. A maiden traps it with her charms, and the hunters appear to kill it. In the last panel, "The Unicorn in Captivity", the unicorn is alive and happy, chained to a pomegranate tree. Scholars think the red marks on its body may be pomegranate juice, a symbol of fertility, rather than blood. The meaning of the returned unicorn is still unclear. The series was woven about 1500 in the Low Countries, probably in Brussels or Liège, for an unknown patron. The French artist Jean Duvet later made six engravings on the same theme in the 1540s.

Another set of six tapestries, Dame à la licorne ("Lady with the unicorn"), is in the Musée de Cluny in Paris. These were also woven in the Southern Netherlands before 1500. They show the five senses and finally Love, with unicorns in each piece. Copies of these tapestries were made for Stirling Castle in Scotland, replacing a set listed in the castle's 16th-century inventory. Unicorns also appeared in religious art. In one rare late-15th-century picture of the hortus conclusus, the Annunciation to Mary was combined with the unicorn hunt. The unicorn already stood for the Incarnation, though it is not always clear whether this meaning was intended. In some scenes the archangel Gabriel blows a horn while hounds chase the unicorn into the Virgin's arms. The Council of Trent later banned this overly elaborate style, partly because no one now believed the unicorn was a real animal. Shakespeare scholars describe another hunting method: a hunter stood in front of a tree while the unicorn was goaded into charging. The hunter stepped aside at the last moment, and the unicorn's horn stuck deep in the tree, as described in Timon of Athens.

Heraldry

In heraldry, a unicorn is often shown as a horse with a goat's cloven hooves and beard, a lion's tail, and a slender, spiral horn on its forehead. Early heraldry did not use the unicorn much, but it became popular from the 15th century. It is usually shown with a broken chain on its collar, which means it has broken free. In heraldry, the unicorn is best known as a symbol of Scotland. It was believed to be the natural enemy of the lion, a symbol that the English royals had adopted about a hundred years earlier. Two unicorns supported the royal arms of the King of Scots and Duke of Rothesay. Since the 1707 union of England and Scotland, the royal arms of the United Kingdom have been supported by a unicorn and an English lion. Golden unicorn coins, with a unicorn on the obverse, were used in Scotland in the 15th and 16th centuries. Carved unicorns were used as finials on Mercat crosses, showing that a settlement was a royal burgh. The Earl of Kinnoull was given special permission to use the unicorn in his arms, as an augmentation of honour. The crest of Clan Cunningham bears a unicorn head.

See also: The Lion and the Unicorn

Modern culture

See also: Unicorn trend

See also: LGBTQ symbols

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, unicorns became popular again. They appeared in children's toys, clothing, stationery, and digital media, and they were a common theme in books and animated shows such as My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Unicorn Academy. Google Ngram data shows that references to unicorns in English-language books rose during this time. Unicorn imagery also became popular with adults, in food, fashion, and online style, as part of the "unicorn trend" with rainbow colors, sparkles, and fantasy designs. Toymakers made toys and accessories with unicorn-style horns, and unicorn-themed birthday parties became popular.

By the beginning of the 21st century, unicorns had become a queer symbol.

The rainbow flag, created by American artist Gilbert Baker in 1978 to show the diversity of the queer community, became well known during the gay rights protests of the 1970s and 1980s. Unicorns had been linked to rainbows since the Victorian era, and they came to symbolize the queer community. There is no agreement on how this happened. Some people say the unicorn's gender fluidity makes it a good symbol for the LGBTQ community. In ancient myths, the unicorn was usually shown as male, but today it is usually shown as female.

Similar animals in religion and myth

The re'em is an animal mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible, often as a symbol of strength. It was a wild, very strong animal with one or more large horns, and it best fits the aurochs, a large wild ox. Ancient Mesopotamian art often showed it from the side with only one horn visible. The Authorized King James Version of 1611 used the word "unicorn" for re'em, following the Septuagint and the Vulgate, while the American Standard Version calls it "wild ox." Classical Jewish teaching did not identify the re'em as a unicorn. Some rabbis in the Talmud discussed whether the Tahash was a single-horned kosher animal, or was similar to the keresh, which Marcus Jastrow described as "a kind of antelope, unicorn."

The qilin is a creature from Chinese mythology that is sometimes called "the Chinese unicorn," but it is more like a chimera than a unicorn. It has a deer's body, a lion's head, green scales, and a long, forward-curving horn. The Japanese version, the kirin, looks more like the Western unicorn. The Quẻ Ly of Vietnamese myth is also sometimes called a unicorn. It is a symbol of wealth and prosperity that first appeared to Emperor Duong Cao To after a military victory that led to his conquest of Tây Nguyên. In 2012, the Korea News Service reported that the Kiringul had been found, linked to a kirin ridden by King Dongmyeong of Goguryeo. Starting in the Ming dynasty, the qilin became linked with giraffes, after a voyage by Zheng He to East Africa...