Although known for millennia by many of
the peoples of Africa and Asia, elephants’ introduction to the classical
West came around 331 B.C., when Alexander the Great encountered war
elephants as his army swept from Persia into India. At the river Jhelum,
in present-day Pakistan, Alexander defeated the Indian ruler Porus, who
was said to have 100,000 war elephants in his army. Ever since, whether
revered as a divine symbol of luck and wisdom, used as unique tools of
diplomacy between leaders, deployed to intimidate opposing armies or put
on display in the service of status or science, elephants have loomed
large in the historical record. Check out 10 notable examples.
Pyrrhus’s Pachyderms
The elephants of Pyrrhus (Credit: The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)
After Alexander, it became fashionable (if not always militarily
expedient) for up-and-coming generals to field a few elephants in their
armies. In 279 B.C., the Greek general Pyrrhus attempted to revive
Alexander’s empire, invading southern Italy with a force that included
20 armed and armored elephants. Pyrrhus hoped his tuskers would terrify
the defending Romans, but the beasts’ main effect was to block his own
army’s advances through narrow streets. Pyrrhus also ran into the most
common difficulty with war elephants: whenever the beasts panicked they
often bolted, trampling his own army’s foot soldiers. Pyrrhus’ invasion
was successful, but costly, spawning the term “Pyrrhic Victory”—the
ancient historian Plutarch quotes him as quipping: “If we are victorious
in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
Surus: Crossing the Alps with Hannibal
Hannibal crossing the Alps (Credit: DeAgostini/Getty Images)
Widely acknowledged as one of the greatest military leaders in
history, the Carthaginian general Hannibal famously invaded Italy from
the north in 218 B.C., crossing the Alps from Gaul with an army of
foot-soldiers, cavalry and a handful of north African forest elephants,
smaller than the Asian and African elephants familiar to today’s
zoo-goers. Of the six elephants that survived the arduous mountain trek,
five died the following winter. The sixth, a one-tusked elephant named
Surus, became Hannibal’s mount and mobile viewing platform in the
marshes of the Arno. Over the next 15 years, Hannibal won significant
battles and occupied much of Italy, sometimes with reinforcement
elephants shipped directly from Africa. In a 209 B.C. battle with the
Roman consul Marcellus, Hannibal’s war elephants created havoc until the
Romans managed to wound one, touching off a cascade of panic among the
pachyderms.
Kandula: The Elephant Who Helped Unify Sri Lanka
Elephant wall at Ruwanwelisaya, Sri Lanka (Credit: JTB Photo/UIG via Getty Images)
Another famed ancient elephant was the trusty companion of King
Dutugamunu, the second-century B.C. ruler of Sri Lanka, who famously
defeated King Elara, his South Indian rival, to become ruler of the
entire island of Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka). Captured in the forest
around the time of Dutugamunu’s birth, the elephant Kandula grew up
alongside the young prince. As the royal mount, he performed heroically
in the siege of Vijitanagara (161 B.C.), returning to finish breaking
down a fortified gate after recovering from having molten pitch poured
on his back. According to the Mahavamsa, an ancient Buddhist chronicle,
the king rushed to Kandula to administer a salve, exclaiming, “Dear
Kandula, I’ll make you the lord of all Ceylon!” Later Kandula was
Dutugamunu’s mount in his one-on-one combat when he defeated Elara
(whose elephant’s name, Maha Pambata, means “big rock.”)
Mahmud: The Elephant Whose Arrival Marked Muhammad’s Birth
14th-century illustration of the rebuilding of the Kaaba in Mecca during the early 600s.
The first year of the Islamic calendar corresponds to A.D. 622, the
year of the Hirja (the prophet Muhammad’s emigration from Mecca to
Medina), but the prophet’s birth occurred 52 years earlier, in what is
known in the Islamic world as the “Year of the Elephant”—so named
because it was the year a Christian Yemeni ruler attempted (with one or
more war elephants) to invade Mecca and destroy the Kaaba, the central
shrine in Mecca that predated Islam. According to Islamic tradition, the
lead elephant, prophetically named Mahmud, halted at the border of
Mecca and refused to enter.
Abdul-Abbas: Charlemagne’s Elephant
12th-century depiction of a white war elephant
In A.D. 801, a Jewish trader named Isaac returned to Europe after a
four-year mission to the Persian Empire and Africa. He had been sent by
Charlemagne, the Frankish king who was crowned the first Holy Roman
Emperor, to procure an elephant from Haroun-al-Raschid, the Abbasid
Caliph who would later be immortalized in many of the “Arabian Nights”
stories. Known for making Baghdad a cosmopolitan center of religious and
scientific study, Haroun sought friendly relations with Charlemagne in
part to counterbalance two rival dynasties—the Byzantines in Greece and
the Umayyads in Spain. The elephant, named Abdul-Abbas after the founder
of the Abbasid empire, found a welcome home at Charlemagne’s court at
Aix-la-Chapelle (today’s Aachen, Germany). Charlemagne took Abdul-Abbas
to war with the Danes in 804, but the elephant steered clear of the
fighting.
Henry III’s Elephant
Henry III's elephant (Credit: British Library/Robana via Getty Images)
Charlemagne was hardly the only Medieval European ruler to be the
recipient of large-mammal diplomacy. Henry III, who ruled England from
1207 to 1272, was the recipient of several such gifts. Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick II sent him a camel, while the king of Norway gave a
polar bear. But Henry’s biggest gift came from France’s Louis IX—an
African elephant. Henry quickly dispatched the Sheriff of London to
build, without delay, “one house of forty feet long and twenty feet
deep, for our elephant.” Crowds flocked to see it, including the English
chronicler and illustrator Matthew Paris, who made a remarkably
detailed illustration of the beast. Sadly, after just two years as the
toast of London, Henry’s elephant died, purportedly after having been
given too much red wine to drink.
Hanno: Pope’s Pet, Artist’s Muse, and Critic’s Barb
Sketch of Hanno c. 1514.
In 1514 a grand procession, led by the Portuguese explorer Tristan de
Cunha, wound its way into Rome. Its highlight was a white Indian
elephant, covered in gold brocade and topped with a silver safe
containing precious gifts. This was Hanno, sent by King Manuel I of
Portugal as a gift to Pope Leo X. On cue, the trained animal knelt
before the pontiff, and delighted onlookers by spraying them with a
trunkful of water. Hanno was the centerpiece of Manuel’s strategy to win
papal backing for Portugal’s claim to the newly discovered Spice
Islands in present-day Indonesia—then the world’s sole source of mace
and nutmeg. The strategy worked, and for several years Hanno made
appearances at various Roman festivals. After the elephant died in 1516
at the age of seven, Leo commissioned the artist Raphael to create a
memorial portrait of the beast (now lost). Leo’s devotion to Hanno
provided fuel for the pope’s critics, including Martin Luther,
describing Leo as “indolently catching flies while his pet elephant
cavorted before him.”
Thomas Jefferson’s Mistaken Mammoth
Skeleton of giant mastodon excavated by Charles Willson Peale (Credit: Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)
In 1801 pioneering American natural historian and museum-founder
Charles Willson Peale asked President Jefferson for a federal grant to
excavate a set of bones that had been uncovered in a tar pit near
Newburgh, New York. Jefferson obliged, and Peale uncovered the first
known full remains of a North American mastodon, a prehistoric cousin of
the elephant and mammoth that went extinct 11,000 years ago.
Misidentified as a mammoth, the skeleton of the 11-foot-tall animal was
put on display at Peale’s Philadelphia museum. In 1804 Jefferson, who
doubted that species could go extinct, instructed the leaders of the
Lewis and Clark expedition to keep an eye out for any mammoths, living
or dead, as they journeyed to the Pacific. In 1807 Jefferson
commissioned William Clark to collect mammoth fossils from Big Bone
Lick, Kentucky. Clark then forwarded set of bones to the White House,
where Jefferson enthusiastically laid them out in the East Room.
Jumbo: The Elephant Who Became an Adjective
P.T. Barnum trading card featuring Jumbo (Credit: Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)
Though it was never given to a king or president, the 19th’s
century’s most famous pachyderm counted Queen Victoria as a devoted fan.
Captured by a river in the spring of 1861 in what is now Mali, Jumbo
was eventually taken, by way of a French zoo, to the London Zoological
Society. There the bull elephant became a hugely popular attraction,
ferrying a dozen children at a time around the garden. His name quickly
became a synonym for anything gigantic. In 1882 the zoo set off a
nationalist controversy after it agreed to sell Jumbo to the American
entrepreneur and showman P.T. Barnum for $10,000. Donor campaigns,
prayer vigils and Jumbo’s own dislike of shipping crates were ultimately
unable to keep him on British soil. It took Barnum just two weeks of
American circus ticket sales to recover the cost of Jumbo’s purchase and
transport.
How big was jumbo? According to Barnum’s publicity, he stood 7 feet
tall and weighed 7 tons. Jumbo was the star of the Barnum & Bailey
Circus until 1885, when he was struck and killed in an Ontario rail-yard
accident. In the years following Jumbo’s death, Barnum continued to
make handsome profits exhibiting the elephant’s skeleton and taxidermic
hide.
Lin Wang: World War II Veteran and National Symbol of Taiwan
In 1942 the Japanese invaded Burma, commandeering work elephants to
build roads and fortifications. A year later, Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese
Expeditionary Forces captured 13 of the Japanese elephants, marching
them to China along the Burma Road. After World War II’s end, the seven
surviving elephants from that group were used to build war monuments. In
1947 three were taken to Taiwan. Three years later, there was only one
surviving elephant. Nicknamed Lin Wang (“forest king”), the elephant was
donated to the Taipei City Zoo in 1954, where he became a popular
attraction. After his death in 2003 at the published age of 86 (few
elephants live past 70), Lin Wang was made a posthumous citizen of
Taipei
Anything having to do with dinners, bread and breakfasts at Niagara On The Lake, observing a play at The Stratford Festival, observing a ballet At Shea's Performing Arts Center, watching the Cubs try to play baseball!!!!
In 1942 the Japanese invaded Burma, commandeering work elephants to
build roads and fortifications. A year later, Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese
Expeditionary Forces captured 13 of the Japanese elephants, marching
them to China along the Burma Road. After World War II’s end, the seven
surviving elephants from that group were used to build war monuments. In
1947 three were taken to Taiwan. Three years later, there was only one
surviving elephant. Nicknamed Lin Wang (“forest king”), the elephant was
donated to the Taipei City Zoo in 1954, where he became a popular
attraction. After his death in 2003 at the published age of 86 (few
elephants live past 70), Lin Wang was made a posthumous citizen of
Taipei
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