Image Details
Gail Rubin
ON THE COVER: The scimitar-horned Sahara oryx lives again in Israel as in Biblical times. This curved-horn oryx is closely related to the straight-horn white Arabian oryx. That animal probably inspired the unicorn myth because when viewed in profile its two horns appear as one.
Visitors to the Hai Bar Nature Reserve in the Negev may now see both species of oryx and judge for themselves the plausibility that one is the unicorn. (See “Animals of the Bible: Living Links to Antiquity.”)