A unicorn (Hebrew ראם; Old Greek μονό-κερως; Latin rhinoceros, unicornis) is a mythical creature in the form of a horse with one horn coming out of the forehead. It symbolizes chastity, in a broad sense, spiritual purity and seeking.
The earliest images of unicorns, more than 4 thousand years old, were found in India. Later they began to appear in the myths of Western Asia.
In the ancient world, unicorns were considered real-life animals. Images of a unicorn found on ancient Egyptian monuments and on the rocks of southern Africa are drawings of antelope with straight horns (for example, antelope and oryx), which, when drawn in profile and without considering perspective, seem to be one-horned. There were also one-horned antelopes in case the second horn broke in a duel.
Ctesias, who served as a physician at the Persian court for 17 years, returning to Greece, described massively built wild Indian donkeys with one horn on the forehead, as well as a red head, blue eyes and torso. According to the description of Ctesias, anyone who drinks water or wine from the horn of this animal will never be susceptible to disease. And to catch these unusually fast-footed donkeys is possible only when they are with the cubs that they cannot leave. The story of Ctesias gained popularity thanks to the authority of Aristotle, who briefly referred to the one-horned "Indian donkeys" as "equids" in his "History of Animals".
Roman writer Claudius Elian, born around 170 AD e., in the book "Colorful stories" speaks of three varieties of the unicorn. The first two are similar in description to the donkeys of Ctesias, and the third, cartazon, has a spiral black horn, "the size of an adult horse, reddish color, has a horse's mane and is very fast." Cartazones are not dangerous animals, but males are irreconcilable to each other and even attack females. The temper of males softens during the rut, but with the birth of cubs, they become ferocious again.
In early traditions, the unicorn was also depicted with the body of a bull, a goat and a horse. Some attributed elephant legs and a boar's tail to the unicorn, which led to the assumption that the prototype of the unicorn was a rhinoceros. Pliny calls the land of the Hindus and Central Africa the homeland of unicorns. In one of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, the unicorn has an extremely aggressive disposition, which further confirms its resemblance to a rhino. The Greek "Physiologist" notes that the unicorn is "a swift-footed beast that bears one horn and feeds an evil will towards people." The Bible agrees with this, where the unicorn ("reem") is presented as a fast (Num. 24: 8), dangerous, ferocious (Ps. 21:22) and freedom-loving (Job 39: 9) animal. Today in most modern Bible translations this word is rendered as "bison" or "wild buffalo" (extinct several centuries ago).
The horn of a unicorn (under the guise of which the fang of the narwhal was mostly sold, exported by the Norwegians, Danes and Russian Pomors from the polar regions, as well as the horn of a rhinoceros and mammoth tusk) was used for various products, for example, for scepters and staffs, and was highly valued, especially because, that in the form of grated powder it was considered a miraculous healing remedy for various diseases - from fever, epilepsy, fire (fever), from pestilence, black weakness, from a snake bite, it prolonged youth and strengthened potency, and was also a means of preventing damage. There was a flourishing trade in horn cups, supposedly removing poison from food, it was believed that a poisonous liquid boiled in it. One European miniature of the 15th century depicts Saint Benedict throwing away a piece of bread served to him: the reader of that time, seeing a unicorn next to the saint, could understandthat the bread was poisoned, and the saint guessed it with the help of God. The unicorn's horn allegedly fogged up as it approached the poison. During the Renaissance, a unicorn figurine was placed above pharmacies.
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