Cultural depictions
In many cultures, elephants represent strength, power, wisdom, longevity, stamina, leadership, sociability, nurturance and loyalty.[183][184][185] Several cultural references emphasise the elephant’s size and exotic uniqueness. For instance, a “white elephant” is a byword for something expensive, useless, and bizarre.[186] The expression “elephant in the room” refers to an obvious truth that is ignored or otherwise unaddressed.[187] The story of the blind men and an elephant teaches that reality can be observed from different perspectives.[188]
Elephants have been represented in art since Paleolithic times. Africa, in particular, contains many rock paintings and engravings of the animals, especially in the Sahara and southern Africa.[189] In Asia, the animals are depicted as motifs in Hindu and Buddhist shrines and temples.[190] Elephants were often difficult to portray by people with no first-hand experience of them.[191] The ancient Romans, who kept the animals in captivity, depicted anatomically accurate elephants on mosaics in Tunisia and Sicily. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, when Europeans had little to no access to the animals, elephants were portrayed more like fantasy creatures. They were often depicted with horse- or bovine-like bodies with trumpet-like trunks and tusks like a boar; some were even given hooves. Elephants were commonly featured in motifs by the stonemasons of the Gothic churches. As more elephants began to be sent to European kings as gifts during the 15th century, depictions of them became more accurate, including one made by Leonardo da Vinci. Despite this, some Europeans continued to portray them in a more stylised fashion.[192] Max Ernst’s 1921 surrealist painting, The Elephant Celebes, depicts an elephant as a silo with a trunk-like hose protruding from it.[193]
Elephants have been the subject of religious beliefs. The Mbuti people of central Africa believe that the souls of their dead ancestors resided in elephants.[190] Similar ideas existed among other African societies, who believed that their chiefs would be reincarnated as elephants. During the 10th century AD, the people of Igbo-Ukwu, near the Niger Delta, buried their leaders with elephant tusks.[194] The animals’ religious importance is only totemic in Africa[195] but is much more significant in Asia. In Sumatra, elephants have been associated with lightning. Likewise in Hinduism, they are linked with thunderstorms as Airavata, the father of all elephants, represents both lightning and rainbows.[190] One of the most important Hindu deities, the elephant-headed Ganesha, is ranked equal with the supreme gods Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma.[196] Ganesha is associated with writers and merchants and it is believed that he can give people success as well as grant them their desires.[190] In Buddhism, Buddha is said to have been a white elephant reincarnated as a human.[197] In Islamic tradition, the year 570 when Muhammad was born is known as the Year of the Elephant.[198] Elephants were thought to be religious themselves by the Romans, who believed that they worshipped the sun and stars.[190]
Elephants are ubiquitous in Western popular culture as emblems of the exotic, especially since – as with the giraffe, hippopotamus and rhinoceros – there are no similar animals familiar to Western audiences.[186] The use of the elephant as a symbol of the U.S. Republican Party began with an 1874 cartoon by Thomas Nast.[199] As characters, elephants are most common in children’s stories, in which they are generally cast as models of exemplary behaviour. They are typically surrogates for humans with ideal human values. Many stories tell of isolated young elephants returning to a close-knit community, such as “The Elephant’s Child” from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, Disney’s Dumbo, and Kathryn and Byron Jackson’s The Saggy Baggy Elephant. Other elephant heroes given human qualities include Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar, David McKee’s Elmer, and Dr. Seuss’s Horton.[186]
