An anonymous fifteenth-century Belgian miniature depicts a battle from the Books of the Maccabees in which the hero Eleazar slays a war elephant whose body is about to crush him to death. The illustration shows a truly fanciful creature, a cross between a donkey and an anteater, with an elongated nose, gray fur, and hooves, bearing on its back a stone tower inhabited by three soldiers. The artist, presumably a monk, had evidently never seen an elephant and relied instead on descriptions of the animal. Many similar images exist throughout history and across cultures: manifestations of hearsay,