What are unicorns?
A: Unicorns are legendary creatures that have been described since antiquity
as beasts with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from their
foreheads.
In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the
last thousand years or so been depicted as a what?
A: A white horse-like or goat-like
animal with a long straight horn with
spiraling grooves, cloven hooves, and sometimes a goat's beard.
In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was commonly
described as a what?
A: An extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which
could be captured only by a virgin.
In encyclopedias, its horn was described as having
what?
A: The power to render
poisoned water potable and to heal sickness.
In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of what was
sometimes sold as a unicorn horn?
A: The narwhal.
A creature with a single horn, conventionally called a
unicorn is the most common image on the soapstone stamp seals of what?
A: The Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization ("IVC"), from the centuries
around 2000 BC.
Unicorns are not found in what?
A: Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of natural history.
Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the
reality of unicorns, which they believed lived where?
A: In India, a distant and fabulous realm for them.
Where have unicorns on a relief sculpture been found?
A: At the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in Iran.
The horn itself and the substance it was made of was
called alicorn, and it was believed that the horn holds what?
A: Magical and medicinal properties.
The Danish physician Ole Worm determined in 1638 that
the alleged alicorns were what?
A: The tusks of narwhals.
One traditional method of hunting unicorns involved
entrapment by a what?
A: A virgin.
The famous late Gothic series of seven tapestry
hangings The Hunt of the Unicorn are a high point in European tapestry
manufacture, combining what?
A: Both secular and religious themes.
Where do the tapestries now hang?
A: In the Cloisters division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
City.
In heraldry, a unicorn is often depicted as a horse
with what?
A: A goat's cloven hooves and beard, a lion's tail, and a slender, spiral
horn on its forehead.
In heraldry the unicorn is best known as a symbol of
what?
A: Scotland.
The unicorn was believed to be the natural enemy of
what?
A: The lion.
Two unicorns supported the royal arms of whom?
A: The King of Scots and Duke of Rothesay.
Since the 1707 union of England and Scotland, the royal
arms of the United Kingdom have been supported by what?
A: A unicorn along with an English lion.