Pygarg
Biblical animal
The pygarg () is an animal mentioned in the Bible in Deuteronomy 14:5 as one of the animals permitted for food. The Septuagint translates the Hebrew yachmur (יחמור) as pygargos in Koiné Greek ("white-rumped", from pyge "buttocks" and argo "white"), and the King James Version takes from there its term pygarg.
Henry Baker Tristram (1867) proposed that the pygarg was the Saharan antelope addax and described it as "a large animal, over 3+1⁄2 feet [1 m] high at the shoulder, and, with its gently-twisted horns, 2+1⁄2 feet [80 cm] feet long. Its colour is pure white, with the exception of a short black mane, and a tinge of tawny on the shoulders and back".
Outside the biblical use, the term was also applied to the Siberian roe deer in the 18th century, whose specific name is pygargus in scientific Latin. This deer, like other roe deer, has a white rump, which is consistent with the Septuagint translation while the addax is all-white during the summer (rather than just having a white rump).
References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Easton, Matthew George (1897). "Pygarg". Easton's Bible Dictionary (New and revised ed.). T. Nelson and Sons.
“Pygarg” enters the record as biblical animal. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pygarg, Biblical and animal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7262990. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1867 and 1897.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pygarg” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.