Its crest shines with the sun's own light and shatters the darkness with its calm brilliance. A mysterious fire flashes from its eyes, and a flaming aureole enriches its head. It needs no food to satisfy hunger nor any drink to quench thirst the sun's clear beam is its food, the sea's rare spray its drink–exhalations such as these form its simple nourishment. Equal to the gods is that bird whose life rivals the stars and whose renascent limbs weary the passing centuries. This is the kingdom of the blessèd bird of the sun where it dwells in solitude defended b the inhospitable nature of the land and immune from the ills that befall other living creatures nor does it suffer infection from the world of men. "There is a leafy wood fringed by Oceanus' farthest marge beyond the Indes and the East where Dawn's panting coursers first seek entrance it hears the lash close by, what time the watery threshold echoes to the dewy car and hence comes forth the rosy morn while night, illumined by those far-shining wheels of fire, casts off her sable cloak and broods less darkly.
And this is also done by the swans according to the account of those who have the wit to hear them." The story of the Egyptians about it, that it comes to Egypt, is testified to by the Indians also, but the latter add this touch to the story, that the phoenix which is being consumed in its nest sings funeral strains for itself. "And the phoenix," he said, "is the bird which visits Egypt every five hundred years, but the rest of that time it flies about in India and it is unique in that it gives out rays of sunlight and shines with gold, in size and appearance like an eagle and it sits upon the nest which is made by it at the springs of the Nile out of spices. In his Life of Apollonius, the Greek author Philostratus refers to the phoenix as a bird living in India, but sometimes migrating to Egypt. Such is the story they tell of the doings of this bird. In order to bring him, they say, he first forms a ball of myrrh as big as he finds that he can carry then he hollows out the ball, and puts his parent inside, after which he covers over the opening with fresh myrrh, and the ball is then of exactly the same weight as at first so he brings it to Egypt, plastered over as I have said, and deposits it in the temple of the Sun. They tell a story of what this bird does, which does not seem to me to be credible: that he comes all the way from Arabia, and brings the parent bird, all plastered over with myrrh, to the temple of the Sun, and there buries the body. Its size and appearance, if it is like the pictures, are as follow:- The plumage is partly red, partly golden, while the general make and size are almost exactly that of the eagle. Indeed it is a great rarity, even in Egypt, only coming there (according to the accounts of the people of Heliopolis) once in five hundred years, when the old phoenix dies. They have also another sacred bird called the phoenix which I myself have never seen, except in pictures. The first Greek known to have mentioned the phoenix was the poet Hesiod, in The precepts of Chiron stresses the phoenix's longevity to almost 100,000 years.Ī chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men,Īnd a raven's life makes three stags old, Or it lays an egg in the burning coals of the fire which hatches into a new Phoenix, and the life cycle repeats. Then, both nest and bird would ignite and be engulfed in flames burning fiercely and quickly until only a pile of ashes remained. The Phoenixis a popular creature in Greek and Roman literature, and later in Medieval texts.Īlternatives to the original stories:Once it's time came to pass, it would build a nest of twigs to lie upon. At its time of death a new-born Phoenix emerged fully-grown from its body and straightaway encased its parent in an egg of myrrh and conveyed it to the great Egyptian temple of the Sun in Heliopolis.
The benu was especially venerated in the town that is usually called Heliopolis.The creature lived for at least five hundred years and roamed the lands of Arabia feeding upon oils of balsalm and frankinsense. Therefore this bird, sometimes called "the ascending one", was associated with the sun god Ra, whose ba (soul) it was thought to be. During the flood of the Nile, this beautiful, bluish bird rests on high places and resembles the sunemitting rays of pure sun lightfloating over the waters. In Egyptian mythology, the bird benu (or purple heron) played an important role. The Egyptian mythology and its Greek interpretations must be distinguished. Multicolored fire bird resembling an eagle
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