The Biblical Oryx—A New Name for an Ancient Animal

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In the King James Version of the Bible, it’s translated unicorn. But that’s not what re’em means. Re’em is the Hebrew name for Oryx leucoryx or oryx for short.

This animal is also called the Arabian oryx, the White oryx and the Beatrix oryx because it used to be found in the Arabian desert and it’s white and beautiful. But in Israel, it is now being called the Biblical oryx—with good reason.

Oryx leucoryx was once a lord of the entire Middle East. Its domain embraced most of the Land of Israel. It also inhabited the hostile deserts of Sinai and the undulating Syrian Desert. It even laid claim to the Arabian peninsula—the Great Nafud and the forbidding Rub al’Khali. It was a prince of the land from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea.

From the Bible we get an accurate picture of the oryx in metaphor and simile. To be of great strength is to be an oryx. To be of untameable ferocity is to be an oryx. To be of incredible stature is to be an oryx.

The extraordinary strength of the oryx is reflected in a relevant simile in Numbers 24:8 describing the strength of God: “God who freed them [Israel] from Egypt is for them like the horns of the oryx. They shall devour enemy nations, crush their bones, and smash their arrows.”

The authority or stature manifest in the oryx as a symbol is found in the Biblical description of Moses blessing the tribes. Turning to the tribe of Joseph, the favorite, Moses said, “He is noble, and his horns are like the horns of the oryx; with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth; and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh” (Deuteronomy 33:17).

Few books of the Bible reflect as perceptive a study of nature as does the book of Job. The Almighty scolds Job: “Would the oryx agree to serve you? Would he spend the night at your crib? Can you hold the oryx by ropes to the furrow? Would he plow up the valleys behind you?” (Job 39:9–10). For all his power, Job cannot domesticate the untameable oryx.

In one of his prophecies of death and destruction, Isaiah foresees that even the oryx—one of the most beautiful creatures to be fashioned by the Creator—will fall victim to divine wrath.

Through the ages, various animal horns have been used as shofars—trumpets of praise and glory. Traditionally, the ram’s horn is used to announce the new year. But the horns of various animals, such as goats, ibex, gazelles and antelopes, have been used; the horn of the oryx was considered among the most special. The Psalmist, in his time of greatest danger, pleads for rescue by calling through his greatest trumpet: “Save me from the lion’s mouth; for thou hast heard me from the horns of the oryx” (Psalms 22:21).

Unlike the oryx, the unicorn of the King James Version is a mythical, not a real, creature. The unicorn with its single straight horn projecting majestically from its forehead is known more on medieval tapestries than on Biblical landscapes. However, the oryx may well have been the inspiration for the creation of the unicorn by the medieval imagination.

Occasionally the European knights whom we call the Crusaders must have left their Holy Land fortresses and ventured out into the arid regions beyond. There they must have caught fleeting glimpses of the oryx, that lithe, lovely desert antelope with a coat of pure white, save for a 069few dark markings on its face, legs and tail. The oryx has a light, prancing gait and sometimes seems to float over the desert. Indeed, its trot is very horse-like, similar to the elegant, well-muscled stride of the Tennessee walking horse.

Seen in profile at distances of a hundred yards or more (and it’s highly unlikely the Crusaders ever got any closer), the oryx’s two awesome, straight, but closely-spaced horns appear as one. And that is what the Crusaders must have thought the animal had.

Imaginative descriptions of the unicorn are found in many medieval manuscripts, such as the 12th-century “Le Besteare Divin de Garillaume, clerk de Normandie”:

“The unicorn has but one horn in the middle of its forehead. It is the only animal that ventures to attack the elephant, and so sharp is the nail of its foot, that with one blow it can rip the bellies of that beast. Hunters can catch the unicorn only by placing a young virgin in its haunts. No sooner does he see the damsel, than he runs towards her, and lies down at her feet, and suffers himself to be captured by the hunter.”

This legendary material was expanded and embellished in subsequent centuries. The great painter Leonardo da Vinci, writing in his notebook, makes the relationship between the unicorn and the virgin a bit more intimate. Rather than lying at her feet, Leonardo suggests, the unicorn falls asleep on her lap!^a The unicorn was depicted on countless medieval tapestries, manuscripts and emblems. Even today it is part of the coat of arms of the United Kingdom’s royal family.

This incredible creature of the imagination seemed to the translators of the King James Version the perfect translation of the Hebrew re’em. So in their translation, the mythical unicorn inhabits the pages of the Psalms, Job and the prophet Isaiah.

Modern translators acknowledge the error but commonly translate re’em as “wild ox.”^b This lacks the poetic appeal of “unicorn” and is equally inaccurate. True, the wild ox and the oryx are members of the same biological family, the Bovidae, but with this taxonomic relationship, the similarity ends.

The wild ox could be and has been domesticated; it hardly has the untameable character that is the subject of the Almighty’s admonition in the book of Job. The wild ox has been bound to the furrow and has harrowed the valleys. And it does not have the proud, majestic horns of the oryx.

In recent decades, the oryx has been the target of ruthless extermination. Until the late 19th century, this creature roamed across most of its ancient habitat. Then modern, high-powered rifles were introduced into the Middle East, and the slaughter began. The first major blow came in 1917, when Colonel T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) presented 600,000 modern British rifles to the irregular Bedouin armies. Within two decades, the oryx were exterminated in most of their range.

After the Second World War, oil companies introduced all-terrain vehicles into the region for use by their oil exploration teams. With these, trophy hunters would pursue the oryx into their last refuges, the sands of the Nafud and Rub al-Khali deserts of Saudi Arabia. The last of the truly wild oryx were slaughtered on the edge of the Rub al-Khali in 1973 by Qatari hunters.

Fortunately for the species, a few captive specimens survived in zoos around the world. When Israeli conservationists decided this living Biblical artifact should be restored to the land of its ancestors, they acquired several of the zoo oryx from a most remarkable source—the personal stock of the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

Faisal wanted an orangutan for his zoo in Riyadh, and to acquire the primate, he agreed to trade several oryx. A European animal dealer conducted the negotiations and subsequently shipped the king’s oryx to the Los Angeles Zoo. Mrs. Reese H. Taylor was then president of the Greater Los Angeles Zoological Association and, before long, she started negotiating with General Avraham Yoffe, then director of the Israel Nature Reserves Authority. When they reached an agreement, the oryx were loaded aboard a cargo jet operated by World Airways, 070which volunteered to carry the animals from Los Angeles to New York free of charge. In New York they were loaded on an El Al cargo jet for the flight to Israel. The globe-trotting oryx were taken to the Hai-Bar Arava Wildlife Reserve, which is only 50 miles from the Saudi Arabian border. So they returned very near to where they had begun their journey.

Shortly after the oryx arrived in Israel in 1978, they started to reproduce. Today the reserve boasts a thriving population of 22 oryx. These oryx are now being subjected to extensive repatriation efforts. Because they have been zoo animals, they must undergo a process that is the reverse of domestication. In effect, they are being taught to be wild animals again, to live in natural herd groups, with normal dominance struggles and hierarchies. They are being weaned away from zoo foods—concentrated pellets and sweet hays—and encouraged to eat natural foods, such as acacia twigs and desert grasses. Israeli conservationists are looking forward to the day when a test herd can be released back in nature, to live freely in the wilderness of their ancestors.

Within ten miles of these oryx at the Hai Bar Reserve are the russet cliffs of the Negev’s Timna Valley where 3,300 years ago (about 1300 B.C.) an unknown hand carved into the sandstone some images of the local wildlife, including the oryx, proving that this valley was once part of its native habitat. And so the present is connected to the past.

In Israel today the oryx is being called re’em tenachi, the Biblical oryx. “It is first of all a Biblical oryx,” says Uri Tzon, one of the Israeli wildlife conservationists involved in the Hai-Bar effort. “The species is first described in the Bible; it is native to the land of the Bible. It’s as much a part of our Israeli heritage as the archaeological ruins at Timna, where its image can be seen, or the book of Psalms, where it is used as an image of greatness.”

In the King James Version of the Bible, it’s translated unicorn. But that’s not what re’em means. Re’em is the Hebrew name for Oryx leucoryx or oryx for short. This animal is also called the Arabian oryx, the White oryx and the Beatrix oryx because it used to be found in the Arabian desert and it’s white and beautiful. But in Israel, it is now being called the Biblical oryx—with good reason. Oryx leucoryx was once a lord of the entire Middle East. Its domain embraced most of the Land of Israel. It also inhabited the hostile deserts of […]