Monoceros
Authors: Susanne M Hoffmann
Monoceros, The Unicorn, one of the 88 IAU constellations.
Etymology and History
Origin of Constellation
[1]It is not entirely clear where the unicorn on the star chart comes from. It was probably introduced by the Flemish cartographer Petrus Plancius (1552-1622). He came from Dranauter in Belgium, studied theology, foreign languages and natural sciences in Germany and England, and became a pastor in the Lutheran Reformed Church. Since parts of Belgium belonged to Catholic Spain at that time, Lutheran sermons were not without danger, and he fled to Amsterdam in 1568. There he continued to preach, but turned his attention increasingly to cartography and other natural sciences.
As a Christian preacher, he also Christianised some of the constellations and added new Christian constellations. The fact that the unicorn appears on a globe he made in 1613 is therefore – if Plancius himself was the creator – most likely to have been motivated by Christianity. Until the 18th century, it was believed that unicorns appeared in the Old Testament – but they were not the kind we imagine today.
The word in the Bible that Luther translates as ‘unicorn’ probably refers to a wild bull or aurochs. The Old Testament is strongly influenced by the Babylonian exile (597-539 BCE) of the Jewish elite under Nebuchadnezzar II. The relatively unanimous opinion among researchers is therefore that the concept of unicorns is a misinterpretation of Babylonian images: animals are typically depicted in profile in Babylonian art, and a profile image of an aurochs (for example, on the famous Ishtar Gate, a city gate in Babylon) shows only one horn because the other is hidden. Images from another culture usually seem strange to us, and so it may be that the Jews misunderstood this intentionally or accidentally.
Alternatively, this could be a very early translation error: the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the 3rd century BCE, and the word ‘unicorn’ (Greek: monókeros) found its way into the Old Testament. However, the original Hebrew word generally refers to an unspecified powerful wild animal.
In Greek, Ctesias of Cnidus described powerful wild animals in India in the 5th century. They were said to be very fast, and their (single) horn was detoxifying and therefore an ideal drinking vessel. The novelistic narrative lacks a known source and the fictional content is unclear.
Transfer and Transformation of the Constellation
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Monoceros in Fortin's Atlas Céleste, 1st edition (1776).
Mythology
[1]There are no ancient myths about unicorns. The animal with only one horn appears in fiction and science. Pliny the Elder probably refers to a rhinoceros, Aristotle is unclear, and the fictional authors can all be traced back to Ctesias.
