The statue is depicted with horns on his head. It is believed that this feature comes from a mistranslation by Jerome chapter of Exodus 34:29-35. In this text, Moses is characterized by karan ohr panav ("a face of the emanating rays of light"), which St. Jerome translated the Vulgate cornuta esset facies sua by ("his face was horned").The error in translation is possible because the word "karan" in Hebrew can mean "lightning" or "horn". When Michelangelo sculpted the statue of Moses the translation error had been warned, and the artists of that time had replaced in the representationof Moses, the horns of two light beams. However Michelangelo preferred to keep theearlier iconography.
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