Unicorn lore p1

On enquiry as to what I’m working on, I may have surprised people in the studio during December by excitedly recounting some of the bizarre myth-making surrounding the Unicorn (or Monoceros). What I have been reading really tickles all the reasons I love mythology and storytelling. Fact, fiction, what does it matter if it makes a good story?

I have some unicorn illustrated cards for sale here

This is the first section of my thoughts on Unicorn lore. There will be more!

My artist’s impression of a Wild Ass with the colouring described.

Many histories of the Unicorn start with Ctesias, and I must say it doesn’t feel like very stable ground to build from. However, he was an educated man from Cnidus (then part of Greece, now modern-day Turkey), who travelled to the Persian court in 405 BC, where he served as a physician to Darius II and Artaxerxes II.

A keen history buff, when Ctesias returned to Greece in 398 BC, he wrote copious histories on Persia and India, even claiming that his histories surpassed those of Herodotus. However, his Indica was not written via his own experience but through the stories and recollections of others - and I think we all know how that goes!

Continuing on a theme, the facsimile below is an 1881 translation* of previous abridged and summarised translations of fragments of the original writings. How reliable!

Section 25 refers to what some call the first Western written description of a Unicorn, an imaginative description of the Indian Wild Ass or a rhinoceros. The passage on hucklebones is very particular!

“Their head is of a dark red colour, their eyes blue, and the rest of their body white”

*Ancient India as Described by Ktêsias the Knidian: Being a Translation of the Abridgement of His ‘Indika’ by Phôtios, and of the Fragments of That Work” by J.W. McCrindle.

You can view the book and full text via the Internet Archive collection.