qeren

Every major modern lexicon (BDB, HALOT, DCH, Gesenius 18, TDOT, NIDOTTE) treats this as a single polysemous noun whose senses all radiate from the literal animal horn: horn, drinking or oil horn, the crescent of the moon, a mountain peak, an ivory tusk, the corner of the altar, a ray of light, and power. None splits it into unrelated homonyms. The word is Common Semitic, attested in Akkadian (qarnu), Ugaritic, Aramaic, Phoenician, Arabic, and Ethiopic with the same spread of senses, and the resemblance to Greek keras and Latin cornu is generally treated as parallel inheritance, not borrowing. Margit Suring's monograph remains the only book-length study and supplies the catalogue of contextual senses (rays, power, refuge, weapon, totality, messiah, king, kingdom). She and others stress that Israel, unlike its neighbors, never depicts its God as horned but relocates the horn-motif to humans, altars, and the anointed king. Jacob Milgrom's work establishes the altar's horns as the most sacred points where purifying blood is placed. P. Kyle McCarter argues that the choice of a horn rather than a flask for anointing marks legitimate, enduring Davidic kingship. In the apocalyptic visions of Daniel and Zechariah the horns are read by Collins, Newsom, Goldingay, Hartman and Di Lella, the Meyerses, Petersen, and Boda as kings, kingdoms, or, in Zechariah, the totality of the nations that scattered Judah. The link between horn and radiance (the Mesopotamian melammu) underlies the long debate over Moses' shining or horned face in Exodus 34; Seth Sanders showed from a Babylonian astronomical commentary that one cuneiform sign joins horn, radiance, and light, so the two readings are angles on a single ancient image rather than rival meanings.