The unicorn is the most famous single-horned creature of Western legend — a horse-like beast of great purity, grace, and wildness, with a single long horn projecting from its forehead. The unicorn has come to symbolize purity (because, in the medieval legend, only a virgin maiden could tame it), grace, and untamable wildness. It is on the royal coat of arms of Scotland, in the heraldic devices of medieval Europe, in the imagery of the medieval bestiaries, in the great tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn, and in the modern popular imagination.
The legend of the unicorn is, like so many legendary creatures, a layered tradition: a Greek original, a Christian re-interpretation, a medieval bestiary development, a heraldic adaptation, and a modern popular revival. The unicorn has been, in its long history, an Indian wild ass, a rhinoceros, a symbol of Christ, a symbol of purity, a symbol of Scotland, and a symbol of the untamable in the human heart.
The Greek Origins
The earliest description of the unicorn is by Ctesias of Cnidus, a Greek physician at the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes II, in the fifth century BCE. Ctesias wrote a book called the Indica, on the wonders of India, and in it he described a wild ass of India, white of body, with red head, blue eyes, and a single straight horn projecting from its forehead. The horn, he said, was a cubit long, white at the base, black in the middle, and crimson at the tip. Ctesias said that the creature could not be captured by hunters, but that the young ones could be captured by letting them fall into pits. The horn of the unicorn, he added, could purify poisoned water.
Ctesias’ description is clearly a mixture of the rhinoceros (which he may have seen or heard of in Persia) and the oryx (a one-horned antelope of the region). The name “unicorn” — literally “one horn” — was applied to the creature later. The description was taken up by other Greek writers, including Aristotle (who called it the monoceros, “one horn”), Aelian (who described it as having the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and a single black horn), and Pliny the Elder, who in his Natural History (first century CE) repeated the description and added some details of his own.
The Greek description of the unicorn was not, in its original form, the small white horse of the medieval bestiary. It was a fierce, untamable wild ass of India, the size of a horse or larger, with a single powerful horn that could kill an elephant in a duel. The later transformation of this fierce beast into the graceful white horse of medieval romance is one of the great changes in the history of legendary creatures.
The Medieval Bestiary
The medieval bestiaries transformed the unicorn. The Physiologus, the Greek Christian bestiary of the second or third century CE, was the first to develop the legend in its Christian form. The Physiologus said that the unicorn was a small animal, like a young goat, with a single horn. It was so fierce that no hunter could catch it. But a virgin maiden could tame it: the unicorn would lay its head in the virgin’s lap, and the hunters could then take it.
This is the legend of the unicorn as we know it, the legend of the purity of the maiden and the wildness of the creature. The Christian interpretation was immediate and powerful: the unicorn was Christ, the virgin was Mary, the hunters were the Jews or the Romans, the slaying of the unicorn was the crucifixion. The single horn, which pierced the side of the sleeping unicorn, was the lance of the Roman soldier Longinus, which pierced the side of Christ on the cross.
This Christian allegory was the dominant form of the unicorn legend throughout the Middle Ages. The unicorn was a symbol of purity, of grace, of the incarnation, of the redemption. Theologians wrote about the unicorn, poets sang of it, illuminators painted it in gold and lapis. The horn of the unicorn — the alicorn — was the most prized of all medieval objects, capable of purifying poisoned water, of detecting lies, of curing disease.
The bestiary description of the unicorn gave it a spiral horn, white at the base, black in the middle, and crimson at the tip (the colors of the Passion of Christ). It was a small, horse-like creature, sometimes with the beard of a goat, sometimes with the cloven hooves of a deer, sometimes with the tail of a lion. It was wild, untamable except by purity, swift as the wind, and dangerous when cornered.
The Natural History Debate
What was the unicorn, in real life? The question has been debated for centuries. The candidates include:
- The rhinoceros of India and Africa, a real one-horned beast known to the Greeks from travelers’ reports. Ctesias’ description is most likely a confused account of the Indian rhinoceros, the one-horned beast of the East.
- The oryx of the Arabian peninsula, a one-horned antelope (the male oryx has long, straight horns, and a profile view of a horned oryx can look like a one-horned creature). The unicorn may be a stylized oryx.
- The narwhal of the Arctic, whose long, single tusk was sold in medieval Europe as the horn of a unicorn. The alicorn, in many famous cases, has been shown to be a narwhal tusk. The unicorn of the legend may have been a way of explaining the strange long tusks brought north from the Arctic.
- The Elasmotherium, a giant one-horned rhinoceros that lived in the steppes of Central Asia and survived into prehistoric times. The Elasmotherium was much larger than a horse, but its single massive horn would have looked like a unicorn’s horn to a frightened hunter.
- A purely mythical creature, the unicorn as a symbol rather than as a real beast. The alicorn would then be a relic of a creature that never was.
Most scholars now think that the unicorn was originally a real creature — a rhinoceros, an oryx, a narwhal, or some combination — that was gradually mythologized into the small, white, horse-like creature of the medieval bestiaries. The change happened over centuries, as the legend moved westward and as the Christian allegory took hold.
The Medieval Tapestries
The unicorn is celebrated in two of the most famous sets of medieval tapestries in the world. The first is The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne), a set of six tapestries made in Flanders around 1500, now in the Musée de Cluny in Paris. The tapestries show a noble lady with a unicorn, against a background of flowers and trees. Each tapestry bears a motto: “To my only desire” (À mon seul désir). The meaning of the tapestries has been debated for centuries, but they are perhaps the most beautiful representations of the unicorn in Western art.
The second is The Hunt of the Unicorn (La Chasse à la licorne), a set of seven tapestries made in Flanders around 1500, now in the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The tapestries show the hunt of the unicorn, the capture of the unicorn by a virgin, the killing of the unicorn, the bringing of the unicorn into a castle, and the resurrection of the unicorn from a fountain. The tapestries are in a remarkable state of preservation and are among the most famous works of medieval art in the world.
The Unicorn in Heraldry
The unicorn is one of the most prominent creatures in European heraldry. It appears in the royal arms of Scotland, where the unicorn is shown supporting the Scottish shield, paired with the lion of England (the lion on the right, the unicorn on the left, with the Scottish crown in the center). The unicorn has been a Scottish symbol since the twelfth century, when it first appeared on the seal of William I of Scotland. The English royal arms adopted the unicorn as a supporter after the union of the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603 under James I.
The unicorn, in heraldry, is always shown with a single horn projecting from its forehead, often with a spiral pattern. It is shown in various tinctures (colors), but the most common is the silver or white unicorn with a gold horn. The unicorn, in heraldry, stands for purity, grace, nobility, and strength. It is the only one of its kind, the unique creature, the noble and solitary beast.
The Unicorn Horn Trade
The horn of the unicorn — the alicorn — was the most prized of all medieval objects, and a thriving trade in alleged unicorn horns grew up in the later Middle Ages. The horns were sold by apothecaries as a universal antidote to poison, and they were used in the cups of kings and nobles to detect and neutralize any poison in the wine. The cup of the Danish king Christian III, the cup of the elector of Saxony Augustus, the cup of the emperor Rudolf II — all were said to be made of unicorn horn, and all were later shown to be made of narwhal tusk.
The narwhal tusk, the long single tooth of the Arctic narwhal, was the basis of much of the alicorn trade. The tusks came from Greenland and Iceland, were traded south through Scandinavia and the Hanseatic League, and were sold in the markets of Europe as the horns of unicorns. The tusks are white, spiraled, and can grow up to nine feet long — they look exactly like the alicorn of legend.
The trade in narwhal tusks as unicorn horn continued for centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the great powers of Europe collected narwhal tusks as curiosities, displayed them in their cabinets of wonders, and gave them as diplomatic gifts. The alicorn, in the form of the narwhal tusk, was one of the great commercial objects of the early modern period.
The Modern Revival
The unicorn had a major revival in the nineteenth century, when medievalism became a major cultural force. The seal of Scotland, the Victorian taste for the medieval, the publication of such books as The Book of the Unicorn and the 1885 The Truth About Unicorns — all contributed to a renewed interest in the creature. The unicorn appeared in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, in the poetry of Tennyson, in the novels of William Morris, and in countless other nineteenth-century works.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the unicorn has become even more popular. It is in My Little Pony (the unicorn Twilight Sparkle and many others), in Harry Potter (the unicorns of the Forbidden Forest, the blood of which keeps the wizard Voldemort alive), in The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle’s 1968 novel, with the beautiful unicorn who is the last of her kind), in Fantasia (the white unicorn of the moonlight scene, drawn from the medieval tapestries), and in countless fantasy novels, films, and television series. The unicorn is, in the modern imagination, the symbol of purity and grace, the beautiful and untamable creature that can be approached only by the pure of heart.
The Eastern Cousins
The unicorn is not unique to the West. The Japanese kirin (麒麟), the Chinese qilin (麒麟), the Korean girin (기린), and the Vietnamese kỳ lân are all members of the same family of single-horned mythical creatures. The qilin of Chinese tradition is a chimera — head of a dragon, body of a deer or horse, scales of a fish, tail of an ox, hooves of a horse, and a single horn on its head. The qilin is associated with the appearance of a sage or a great ruler, and is a creature of great gentleness and omen. The qilin is, in Chinese art, one of the most beloved of mythical creatures, and it appears on the imperial robes, in the imperial gardens, in countless paintings and carvings.
The Arabic karkadann (كركدان), a fierce one-horned creature of the Arabian and Persian tradition, is closer to the original Greek unicorn than to the later medieval version. The karkadann is a fierce beast, dangerous and untamable, the king of the wild asses, the bane of the hunters. The karkadann was a real or imagined rhinoceros of the Arabic world, and it was the basis of the medieval European unicorn legend.
The Symbolism of the Unicorn
The unicorn has been read as a symbol of many things. To the Greeks, it was a fierce and untamable beast of the East. To the medieval Christians, it was Christ, captured by the Virgin, slain by the lance. To the heraldists, it was Scotland, the noble and solitary creature. To the alchemists, it was the prima materia, the raw material of the Great Work. To the Victorians, it was purity, grace, and the medieval revival. To the modern reader, it is the magical horse, the symbol of the untamable, the beautiful and rare creature that can be approached only by the pure of heart.
The unicorn is, like the dragon, like the phoenix, like the kraken, a creature of the modern imagination as well as the ancient. It is still being told, still being painted, still being read about. The unicorn has been with us for at least two thousand years, and it will be with us for at least two thousand more.
Last reviewed: June 2026.