Bam! UNICORN! Except it could also be a rhinoceros. The re’em was translated as monocerous in Greek, which became unicornis in Latin. We know the re’em is used to describe unruly wild power and the re’em seems like it was a real, local animal. The Biblical unicorn has its roots in Middle Eastern culture and fauna…we don’t know exactly what the re’em cited in the Book of Job 39:9-12, and Psalms 29:6 and Isaiah 34:7 is, exactly. The Metropolitan Museum of ArtĪt around the same time, another important strand of Western unicorn mythology developed in Ancient Israel. India, therefore, demarcates the edges of Greek scientific research and record. In 326 BC, Alexander the Great made it as far as India, but didn’t stay for long. Anyways, Cnidus’s record of the Indian unicorn also indicates how much the Ancient Greek world oriented itself towards the Mediterranean and what is now the Middle East: modern Turkey, Syria, Egypt and Iran. The name alone alerts us to the ways “Western” cultures are far more diverse and complex than we now recognize. The body of this animal is white, but “their heads are dark red.” Cnidus is in modern-day Turkey, but Ctesias’s name identifies him as culturally Greek. In 398 BC, Ctesias of Cnidus records “in India certain wild asses” with “a horn in the forehead which is about a foot and a half in length” (qtd. 87, German Book Illustration before 1500: Anonymous Artists, 1489-1491 “Virgin and Unicorn.” Defensorium Inviolatae Virginitatis Beatae Mariae.