unicorns and religious references in HP (was checking out the library book

[nkafkafi]

> Pippin:
> The first reference to a one-horned animal  is in the writing of
> Ctesias, a Greek physician who lived around 400 BC. The animal he 
> describes resembles a wild ass, is fleet and fierce, and has the
> power to neutralize poisons.
>  
> The translators of the Septuagint used the term monoceros (Greek: 
> one horn) to translate the Hebrew re'em. This was then latinized 
> as unicornis in the Vulgate.

Neri:
The Hebrew word re'em refers to the Arabian Oryx, an antelope with (of
course) two long straight horns, which was common in Israel in
biblical times, and finally hunted to near extinction in the 19th
century. I personally had the privilege to do some volunteer work in a
reservation in the Arava desert:
 
http://www.geocities.com/jelbaum/haibar.html
http://redseadesert.com/html/060haibar.html

where they reintroduce these beautiful animals into the wild. This was
a very interesting and exciting work, not to mention slightly
dangerous. One of the females very nearly skewered me when I captured
her newly-born fawn for marking. 

Back to the unicorn, to my knowledge the origin of the unicorn myth is
from ancient Egyptian art representation of the Oryx. The ancient
Egyptian artists depicted the Oryx (like most other things) in
profile, thus drawing only a single horn. The Greeks, who weren't
familiar with this desert antelope, took the description to be
accurate and thus the legend of the monoceres was born. I can't
remember right now where I've read this, and I'm too lazy to dig a
reference at this late hour.

In Europe, the unicorn legend was reinforced by the long tooth of the
Narwhal whale:

http://members.aol.com/puffindog/narwhal.html

These teeth were brought from the northern ocean by the Vikings. The
more southern Europeans, which had never seen a Narwhal, believed them
to be unicorn horns. In Middle-age and Renascence art the unicorns are
described with straight helical horns like the Narwhal tooth. So the
mythological unicorn is actually the intersection of an antelope and a
whale. End of Zoological lecture ;-) 

Neri