From The Mind of Merc - Unicorns

Sometimes I find my mind wandering over various eclectic topics ad occasionally I am inspired to write some of them down. Today I was thinking about unicorns and, more specifically, their inclusion in the bible.

My nan once told me that, when she read the bible, the description of a unicorn – rather than the mystical white equine creature of fantasy – sounded to her much more like a rhinoceros. This intrigued me - could a modern-day mythical animal have been created from a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of a much more common (and well-known) beast? I decided to investigate further.

On consulting the text, the biblical unicorn is described as an animal that:
- Has great strength (Numbers 23:22) and ferocity (Numbers 24:8)
- Has a single horn (Deuteronomy 33:17, Psalms 92:10)
- Is not suitable for menial tasks or perhaps untameable (job 39:10)
All of which do not seem to sit with the delicate, ethereal creature with which the word is associated today.
It is also perhaps telling that at one point (Isiah 34:7) unicorns are mentioned in the same context as bulls and bullocks – thus implying that they are beasts of burden not beauty.

The overall impression given is that my grandmother was right – the description of the unicorn in the bible does not fit with the traditional image of the majestic, single-horned (and often winged) horse and instead could be more suitably applied to the more rugged, native African creature – the rhinoceros.

During my searches, I found another theory that exists relating to biblical unicorns which suggests that ‘unicorn’ refers to some kind of wild ox which is now extinct. This theory was developed in 1899 by Johann Ulrich Duerst and likens the biblical unicorn to the auroch – an ancestor of modern-day cattle. It is based on the supposition that the Hebrew word ‘re’em’ (from which the word unicorn is derived) is based on the word ‘rimu’ –the name given to the one-horned oxen depicted in Mesopotamian reliefs showing King Ashurnasirpal out hunting. However, the aforementioned reliefs are inaccurate and the animals being hunted are purportedly shown with one horn to depict the ‘beauty’ of their two horns being symmetrical – depictions of the same animals in Egyptian art show them with two horns and ergo they are not uni-corns.
Some supporters of the oxen argument claim that the creature referred to in the bible has two horns – using references to ‘the horns of a unicorn’ rather than ‘the horns of unicorns’. However, even if this two horn theory is correct, it does not disprove the association of rhinoceroses and unicorns given that not all rhinoceroses have one horn – there are also the two-horned Bicornis –natives of Asia and Africa.*

The association of Duerst’s theory (and some modern translations) of unicorns with oxen could perhaps be explained when looking at the evolution of the rhinoceros – artistic impressions of the prehistoric manifestations of these creatures do not look like our current incarnations with their supposed furry bodies, exaggerated size, and placement of their renowned horn being much higher up on their heads. However, the transformation from these to their modern-day counterparts can be seen in the development of their skulls – from elasmotherium sibiricum (also known as the Siberian Unicorn) through the sinotherium lagrelii to hispanotherium matritense and rhinoceros unicornis.
Also, almost contemporary images of the re’em - such as that in the floor mosaic in the Basilica of San Giovanni Evangelista – match more closely with that of an antecedent rhinoceros than cave paintings of aurochs –i.e. both creatures that would have been around in and known to those of the biblical era and yet clearly distinguished (in depictions) from each other. 

Further investigation revealed a pre-existing association between biblical unicorns and rhinoceroses as in the original printing of the King James Bible, in 1611, in Isiah 34:7 when the word unicorn is used there is reportedly a footnote that says: “or rhinoceros”.
Also, the Douay-Rheims Bible (which precedes the King James Version) uses the word rhinoceros. As does the Latin Vulgate Bible – published c.400AD: “fortitudo similis est rinocerotis”. Noah Webster’s dictionary of 1828 even goes so far as to define ‘unicorn’ as: “An animal with one horn; the monoceros. This name is often applied to the rhinoceros”

This suggests the words were in fact interchangeable and hence why some versions use one and some the other and proves conclusively the perceptiveness of my grandmother in identifying the unicorn of biblical record as being none other than the cumbersome, ferocious, one-horned beast often found (although, regrettably, increasingly less so) in Africa and Asia.


* Even if the word re’em and rimu are linked it could be that the oxen were labelled rimu to heighten the impression of the beauty of their horn symmetry. Or they might have been incorrectly labelled as rimu as they were believed – from the image - to have one horn.