Your last description pretty well sews up this particular piece being amber then, Aurangzeb.
Amber can be confusing because it comes in many different "shades", from almost colorless and nearly as transparent as glass to completley opaque and almost a mustardy brown that looks like solid dried putty.
Most fossilized materials are created as the original substance, bone, shell, scale or even feather is gradually replaced by minerals as a "cast", while amber, as far as I know, is unique in that it's the original substance that is extremely compressed into a super hardness over the millenia.
Tom, giraffe horns are exactly like rhino horns in that there is no bony protruberance from the skull other than a rounded bone "bump" that serves as the anchoring base, with the rest just compressed "hair" that grows into a hard, solid mass that's definitely not hollow .
While the texture IS denser at the very center, it's all the same material and is carvable.....to the best of my knowledge, giraffe horns probably max out at about 8"-10" long and about 3" thick on very old bulls.
Giraffe horn, by the way, is different from that of a rhinocerous in that it culminates in an expanded round knob at the end, while on the rhino, of course, can grow to great lengths and become extremely thin and pointed, deadly when driven by the mass and power of the living animal......I've seen film of them driving it into the heavy body of a Landrover or even hooking it under a fender and visibly lifting the vehicle without the horn itself breaking, a testament to how strong "hair" can be.
To the best of my knowledge, these are the only two living animals with this type of horn, while some extinct relatives had gigantic versions.....one of the brontotheres had a nose horn that exceded living rhinos in length and divided at the apex into two huge rounded masses very much like those of a giraffe, living pile drivers in their time.....now THOSE would have made some hilts!
Mike