Rev. W. Haughton on the Unicorn of the Ancients. 365 



And first of all, there is the Unicorn of the Bible. Pages upon 

 pages have been written on this subject. Some have said it must 

 have been the Antelope {Oryx leucoryx) of North Africa, Syria, 

 &c., that the horns, seen in profile, appear as one, and hence the 

 mistake of regarding it as a one-horned animal ; others have no 

 hesitation in referring the Unicorn to the one-horned Rhinoceros 

 {R. unicornis) of Asia ; this is the opinion generally entertained 

 at this day. Now, all attempts to discover a one-horned animal 

 that shall represent the Unicorn of our English Bible are beyond 

 the mark entirely, and for this simple reason : the so-called 

 Unicorn is no Unicorn at all ; the Hebrew word {Kern) denotes a 

 two-horned animal, beyond a shadow of a doubt. The '' Unicorn '* 

 of our English Bible owes its origin to the Septuagint and Vul- 

 gate versions*. In the 17th verse of Deut. xxxiii., which con- 

 tains a portion of Joseph's blessing, it is said, " His horns are 

 like the horns of a R^emf.'^ Our translators, seeing the contra- 

 diction involved in the expression " horns of the Unicorn/' have 

 rendered the Hebrew singular noun as if it were a plural form 

 in the text, though they give the correct translation in the 

 margin. The two horns of the R''em are "the ten thousands of 

 Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh,'' and represent the 

 two tribes which sprang from one (viz. Joseph), just as two 

 horns spring from one head. The Unicorn of the Bible therefore 

 may be dismissed at once, as being a very unhappy translation 

 of the Hebrew two- horned R'em, the animal denoted being, 

 there cannot be much doubt, some species of " wild ox,^' as ap- 

 pears pretty evident from a comparison of the different passages 

 where the word occurs in Holy Scripture. The R'em was two- 

 horned; it is almost always mentioned with bovine animals; it 

 is said to push with its horns ; it must have been frequently seen 

 by the ancient Hebrews roaming on the hills of Palestine or in 

 the woods of the Jordan valley, as is evident from the numerous 

 allusions to it. It is true there is no wild ox at present known 

 to exist in Palestine; but this is no reason why, in early times, 

 some mighty species, allied perhaps to the Urus which Csesar 

 saw in the Hercynian Forest, should not have existed in that 

 country. Lions were certainly not uncommon in Palestine and 

 Syria in Biblical times, as is clear from the numerous allusions 

 to them in Holy Writ ; and it is interesting to note, as an addi- 

 tional proof, that the late Dr. Roth discovered bones of the Lion 

 in gravel near the Jordan : it is therefore quite probable that 



* MovoKepcos in all the passages but one, where the Septuagint has ASpoL 

 The Vulgate has unicornis, and sometimes rhinoceros. 



t That the R'em possessed two horns was shown in 1/37 by Schultens, 

 who, in his Commentary on the Book of Joh (xxxix.), draws especial atten- 

 tion to the above passage in Deuteronomy. 



