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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PER-PIG |
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PHOENIX (Gr. 4oivt ) , a fabulous sacred bird of the Egyptians. The Greek word is also used for a date-palm, a musical instrument like a guitar, and the colour purple-red or crimson. According to the story told to Herodotus (ii. 73), the bird came from Arabia every 500 years, bearing his father embalmed in a ball of myrrh, and buried him in the temple of the sun. Herodotus, who had never seen the phoenix himself, did not believe this story, but he tells us that the pictures of it represented a bird with golden and red plumage, closely resembling an eagle in size and shape. According to Pliny (Nat. hist. x. 2), there is only one phoenix at a time, and he, at the close of his long life, builds himself a nest with twigs of cassia and frankincense, on which he dies; from his corpse is generated a worm which grows into the young phoenix. Tacitus (Ann. vi. 28) says that the young bird lays his father on the altar in the city of the sun, or burns him there; but the most familiar form of the legend is that in the Physiologus (q.v.), where the phoenix is described as an Indian bird which subsists on air for 506 years, after which, lading his wings with spices, he flies to Heliopolis
Ptolemy
The form and variations of these stories characterize them as popular tales rather than official theology; but they evidently must have had points of attachment in the mystic religion of Egypt, and indeed both Horapollon and Tacitus speak of the phoenix as a symbol of the sun. Now we know from the Book of the Dead, and other Egyptian texts, that a stork, heron or egretcalled the benu was one of the sacred symbols of the worship of Heliopolis
alien
2 Some other ancient accounts may be here referred to. That ascribed to Hecataeus is, in the judgment of C. G. Gobet (Mnemosyne, 1883), stolen from Herodotus by a late
from Arabia, delighting the gods with his fragrance and rising from the sinking flames of the morning glow, was enough to suggest most of the traits materialized in the classical pictures of the phoenix. That the benu is the prototype of the phoenix is further confirmed by the fact that the former word in Egyptian means also " palm-tree," just as the latter does in Greek. The very various periods named make it probable that the periodical return of the phoenix belongs only to vulgar legend, materializing what the priests knew to be symbolic. Of the birds of the heron family the gorgeous colours and plumed head spoken of by Pliny and others would be least inappropriate to the purple heron (Ardea purpurea), with which, or with the allied Ardea cinerea, it has been identified by Lepsius and Peters (Alteste Texte des Todtenbuchs, 1867, p. 51). But the golden and purple hues described by Herodotus may be the colours of sunrise rather than the actual hues of the purple heron. How Herodotus came to think that the bird was like an eagle is quite unexplained; perhaps this is merely a slip of memory.Many commentators still understand the word T?in, chol, in Job xxix. 18 (A.V. " sand ") of the phoenix. This interpretation is perhaps as old as the ( original
hair or plumage, and were themselves called by the same name (cf. Yaqut i. 529, and Dozy, s.v.). The 'anka (Pers. simurgh), a stupendous bird like the roc (rukh) of Marco Polo and the Arabian Nights, also borrows some features of the phoenix. According to Kazwini (i. 420) it lives 1700 years, and when a young bird is hatched the parent of opposite sex burns itself alive. In the book of Kalila and Dimna the simur or 'anka is the king of birds, the Indian garuda, on whom Vishnu rides: ,End of Article: PHOENIX (Gr. 4oivt ) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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