Chapter 21. Unicorns of Mount Hermon
A horned helmet (generally) capped beautiful white or black steeds ridden by Rephaim kings after the flood, which was well represented in John Duncan’s masterpiece painting The Riders of the Sidhe (1911), capturing a Tuatha De Danann king with his (snow-white) fairy queen and entourage riding white stallions. This Tuatha De Danann Dragon king rides a white steed, sporting a golden face mask with a protruding horn, reflecting their history and imagery of antediluvian giant kings…
Aryans of the Media Magna empire, which preceded the beast Persian empire recorded in the book of Daniel, reared Nisaean white stallions which Herodotus stated were very large, swift, and renowned for their “pure whiteness,” horses that surpassed those reared in India, which was also populated by Aryans. Herodotus noted that Xerxes waged war accompanied by a riderless chariot named Jupiter/Zeus no mortal was permitted to ride in, which was pulled by eight Nisaean white horses of “unusual size.” Xerxes followed in his chariot, also pulled by Nisaean horses. Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, was black with a star representing his sponsoring god, while Julius Caesar rode white and black horses. In Greek mythology the unicorn was a symbol of purity associated with the goddess Artemis, who rode a chariot drawn by eight unicorns.
The western unicorn mythos further derives from several Greek historians who quoted Ctesias’ fourth-century BC Indica, which described this mythical creature that thereafter surfaced in the English translation of the Greek Septuagint. Indica only survives today in fragments written down by Photios, a patriarch of Constantinople (AD 813–893); the tome documents India’s recollections of unicorns: “Their head is of a dark red color, their eyes blue, and the rest of their body white. They have a horn on their forehead, a cubit in length. This horn for about two palm breadths upward from the base is of the purest white, where it tapers to a sharp point of a flaming crimson, and, in the middle, is black.”
