History of elephants in Europe

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The history of elephants in Europe dates back to the time of the

Europeans came in contact with live elephants in 327 BC, when

• The 20[a] elephants in the army of Pyrrhus of Epirus, which landed at Tarentum in 280 BC for the first Battle of Heraclea, recorded by Plutarch's (in Lives), Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy. "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".^[3] Coins of Tarentum after this battle also featured elephants.
• The 37 elephants in
  Rhône in October/November 218 BC during the Second Punic War, recorded by Livy
  .
• The first historically recorded elephant in northern Europe was brought by
  Colchester. At least one skeleton with flint weapons that has been found in England was initially misidentified as this elephant, but later dating proved it to be a mammoth skeleton from the Stone Age.^[4]
• Abul-Abbas, the Asian elephant which Harun ar-Rashid gave to Charlemagne in 797 or 802. The animal died in 810, of pneumonia.
• The
  A. A. M. Duncan
  , Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (1975), p. 128)
• The Cremona elephant presented to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor by Al-Kamil in 1229.
• The elephant given by
  war elephants did exist, though not ones made of stone. A carving of the elephant can be found on a contemporary miserichord in Exeter Cathedral. This animal may be the inspiration for the heraldic device 'Elephant and Castle', the arms of the Cutlers' Company of London, a guild founded in the 13th century responsible for making scissors, knives and the like. Its heraldry survived in an 18th-century pub-sign that in turn gave its name to a largely modern district in South London
  .
• In the 1470s King Christian I of Denmark founded a chivalric order, the Order of the Elephant, and had it confirmed by Pope Sixtus IV. The order takes its name from the battle elephants which symbolized the Christian Crusades. Today^[update], it continues to be awarded under statutes established by king Christian V in 1693, amended in 1958 to permit the admission of women to the order.
• The elephant given by
  René d'Anjou
  about 1477.
• The merchants of Cyprus presented Ercole d'Este with an elephant in 1497.
• Suleyman the elephant, a present from the Portuguese king John III to Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor. Travelling from Spain in 1551, it arrived in Vienna in 1552, but died in 1554.
• Raphael
  himself.
• Ceylon that became famous in early 17th-century Europe, touring through many countries demonstrating circus tricks, and sketched by Rembrandt and Stefano della Bella
  .