Sivathere

A comparision of the original, damaged "sivathere of Kish" with a reconstruction of Sivatherium by an unknown artist.

Sivatherium was a genus of prehistoric giraffid which ranged throughout Africa to the Indian Subcontinent. It was a very large animal; Sivatherium giganteum is by weight, the largest giraffid known, and also possibly the largest ruminant of all time. The youngest sivatherium fossil is 400,000 years old, but it's also theorized to have gone extinct around 8,000 years ago due to a variety of possible depictions of the animal by humans. A minority have suggested that it may still live. Other genera in the subfamily Sivatheriinae include Bramatherium, Hydaspitherium, and Indratherium.

In cryptozoology

George Eberhart lists a theory that the qilin or Chinese unicorn may have been inspired by late-surviving sivatheres, Willy Ley believed the sirrush of the Ishtar Gate represented a living sivathere, and Herbert Wendt suggested that the head of the god Set was based on Libytherium, another prehistoric giraffid.

Dale Drinnon proposes that the supposedly ceratopsian savannah ngoubou, which is reported from Cameroon, may be a persisting sivathere. He suggests that the horned frill and "beaked mouth" of the ngoubou might in fact be a Sivatherium's branching horns and drooping upper lip, and notes that the cryptid is said to give live birth to calves, and has a thin elephant-like tail. He also notes that reconstructions of the Gambian water monster ninki-nanka resemble sivatheres. A correspondent of Karl Shuker suggested that the alleged Indian tygomelia was a living sivathere.

Possible depictions

An alleged sivathere depicted on a Hittite cylinder.

A number of artefacts which may depict sivatheres have been discovered across North Africa and the Near East. These include an 8,000 year old petroglyph in a Saharan rock shelter; rock paintings in India; Syrian and Egyptian figurines currently housed in the British Museum; a Russian statuette and tin whistles from Siberia which may depict Bramatherium, a close relative of Sivatherium; and a Hittite cylinder impression from Turkey depicting an animal with moose-like horns. Dale A. Drinnon believes that African rock art at Kuppenhole, Tanzania, may depict a sivathere, while Michel Raynal suggests that Algerian rock art at Tassili identified as an okapi by Bernard Heuvelmans may represent some other fossil giraffid.

"Immense nests of African social grossbeaks"; engraving by Charles Laplante, from Earth, Sea and Sky (1887), depicting a moose-like animal of Africa.

An engraving from Earth, Sea and Sky (1887) focusing on the nests of "African social grosbeaks" (sociable weavers, Philetairus socius) also depicts a strange, moose-like animal which Dale A. Drinnon writes resembles a sivathere. The engraving probably does not originate from Earth, Sea and Sky, and was drawn by Charles Laplante, who was also an illustrator for Jules Verne and scientist Louis Figuier, author of The World Before the Deluge. If it depicts a real scene, it presumably shows modern-day South Africa, Botswana or Namibia, the only countries from which sociable weavers are known.