History of elephants in Europe

The founder of the Indo-Greek Kingdom Demetrius I (205-171 BC), wearing the scalp of an elephant, symbol of his conquest of India.
A Romanesque painting of a war elephant. Spain, 11th century.
The Cremona elephant as depicted in the Chronica maiora, Part II, Parker Library, MS 16, fol. 151v
Sketch of Hanno and mahout, after Raphael, c.1514.

The history of elephants in Europe dates back to the ice ages, when mammoths (various species of prehistoric elephant) roamed the northern parts of the Earth, from Europe to North America (mastodons only occurred in North America.) There was also the dwarf elephant of Cyprus (Elephas cypriotes), Sicily-Malta (Elephas falconeri) and mainland (Elephas antiquus). However, these became extinct several thousand years ago, and subsequently the presence of elephants in Europe is only due to importation of these animals.

Overview

Europeans first came in contact with live elephants in 327 BC, when Alexander the Great descended into India from the Hindu Kush, but Alexander was quick to adopt them. Four elephants guarded his tent, and shortly after his death his associate Ptolemy issued coins showing Alexander in the elephant headdress that became a royal emblem also in the Hellenized East. Aristotle depended on first-hand information for his account of elephants, but like most Westerners he believed the animals live for two hundred years. Roman scouts in the royal Syrian parks shortly before the last of the Seleucids fell to Rome had orders to hamstring every elephant they could capture, and while elephants performed in the circuses of Rome, Shapur's war elephants in the mid-4th century numbered in the hundreds (Fox 1973 p 338).

Elephants largely disappeared from Europe after the Roman Empire. As exotic and expensive animals, they were exchanged as presents between European rulers, who exhibited them as luxury pets, beginning with Harun ar-Rashid's gift of an elephant to Charlemagne.

Examples

Historical accounts of elephants in Europe include:

The elephant of Louis IX as depicted by Matthew Paris.

See also

References

  1. Lane Fox, Robin (1973). Alexander the Great. Penguin. p. 339. ISBN 9780140088786. The most notable elephant in Greek history, called Victor, had long served in Pyrrhus's army, but on seeing its mahout dead before the city walls, it rushed to retrieve him: hoisting him defiantly on his tusks, it took wild and indiscriminate revenge for the man it loved, trampling more of its supporters than its enemies in the process.
  2. Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age, by Adrian Lister, Paul G. Bahn, p. 116

External links

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