6o THE OX AND ITS KINDRED 
man is in accordance with Greek poetic licence and 
fancy. 
During Biblical times the range of the aurochs 
extended into Syria ; the Hebrew word reem, or 
rceym^ translated in the Authorised Version of the 
Bible as unicorn, apparently indicating that animal. 
That the rcem, as I have written in Murray's 
Dictionary of the Bible, was not a one-horned 
animal (whatever the mythical " unicorn " may have 
been) is evident from Deuteronomy, chap, xxxiii. v. 17, 
where, in the blessing of Joseph, it is stated, " His 
glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns 
are like the horns of ait tmicoj-n,^' not, as the text 
of the Authorised Version renders it, " the horns 
of unicorns!' The two horns of the reem are "the 
ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of 
Manasseh." Some difficulty arises from the fact that 
rim or rhim is the Arabic name of Loder's gazelle 
{Gazella leptoceros) of North Africa. Canon Tristram 
indeed suggested that this name may have been 
transferred to the gazelles (and perhaps other ante- 
lopes) after the extermination of the wild ox, but 
this seems improbable. The idea that the buffalo 
is intended is very unlikely, seeing that this animal 
only exists in a domesticated state in Palestine, 
where it appears to have been introduced at a com- 
paratively late epoch. Little can be urged in favour 
of the African two-horned rhinoceros, for that animal 
does not exist in Syria, and even if it had been a 
native it would have been forbidden to be sacrificed 
by the law of Moses, whereas the reem is mentioned 
by Isaiah as coming down with bullocks and rams 
to the Lord's sacrifice. Again, the skipping of young 
reem (Psalm xxix. v. 6) is incompatible w^ith the 
