The phoenix in classical sources
Of all classical authors, Herodotus is the first to provide a detailed version of the myth. In his description of Egypt he wrote that the phoenix was a sacred bird visiting Egypt on very rare occasions, every 500 years to be precise, when, upon the death of its genitor, the winged creature left Arabia making for the sanctuary of the Sun with its father's body wrapped in myrrh, there to bury it. Herodotus goes on to explain: « He conveys him thus:—he forms first an egg of myrrh as large as he is able to carry, and then he makes trial of carrying it, and when he has made trial sufficiently, then he hollows out the egg and places his father within it and plasters over with other myrrh that part of the egg where he hollowed it out to put his father in, and when his father is laid in it, it proves (they say) to be of the same weight as it was; and after he has plastered it up, he conveys the whole to Egypt to the temple of the Sun. »
Herodotus owned that the Egyptians' account of the phoenix is not credible. He associated the winged creature to the benu bird living in Heliopolis' sacred willow. Yet some details in his account, such as the five hundred-yearly appearances and the father's burial or the identification to some kind of eagle are not to be found in known Egyptian constructs. In the descriptions collected there, the bird is first associated to a magpie (25th century BC) then to a heron with two long plumes issuing from the back of its head. One of the interpretations conferred on Herodotus' text is that the bird's flight reflects commercial relations established between the Egyptians and Southern Arab tribes, the latter being known for their trading activities. As from the second half of the first millennium BC, they controlled the herb and spice trade with India, and that of myrrh as well.
Roman writers reprised the myth. When listing the kinds of birds and their characteristics, Ovid[1] observed that they originate in other beings, baring one who regenerates and reproduces itself: the phoenix, as he was called by the Assyrians. It does not live on seeds or grasses but on the gum of frankincense and the juices of amomum[2]. According to Ovid the bird ends its days after five centuries; then a small phoenix is re-born of its father's body, whose life span is meant to be of an equal number of years. « When age has given him strength, and he is able to carry burdens, he relieves the tall palm's branches of the heavy nest, piously bears his own cradle and his father's tomb through the thin air, until, having reached the city of the Sun, he lays the nest down before the sacred doors of the Sun's temple. »
Variously known as Heliopolis or the city of Hyperion, it still had to do with the sun by any other name. Thus Herodotus and Ovid's accounts cover much of the same ground. Tacitus[3] concurred. He refers to the phoenix in a text of the Annals : « the bird called the phoenix, after a long succession of ages, appeared in Egypt and furnished the most learned men of that country and of Greece with abundant matter for the discussion of the marvellous phenomenon. It is my wish to make known all on which they agree with several things, questionable enough indeed, but not too absurd to be noticed. That it is a creature sacred to the sun, differing from all other birds in its beak and in the tints of its plumage, is held unanimously. »
Pliny the Elder[4] also refers to the phoenix legends on two occasions. First in the second book of his Natural History containing the history of birds: the most famous is born in Arabia, he writes, wondering all the while whether its existence « is not all a fable »
. Pliny refers to the writings of Roman Senator Manilius, “so famous for his learning” and rated the first Roman to have mentioned this extraordinary fowl: « when it becomes old [the phoenix] builds a nest of cassia and sprigs of incense, which it fills with perfumes, and then lays its body down upon them to die; that from its bones and marrow there springs at first a sort of small worm, which in time changes into a little bird: that the first thing that it does is to perform the obsequies of its predecessor, and to carry the nest entire to the city of the Sun near Panchaia, and there deposit it upon the altar of that divinity. »
In the thirteenth book of his encyclopaedic work, Pliny returns to the phoenix. Over and above the connection with Arabia, the references to trade and precisions concerning perfume and incense, his account mentions the « royal »
dates of Babylon and a palm tree in the Chora[5] region, « that dies and comes to life again in a manner similar to the phoenix, which, it is generally thought, has borrowed its name from the palm-tree, in consequence of this peculiarity »
.
Thus Herodotus was the first among classical authors to write about the phoenix. His account created a matrix developed at the knee of Egyptian priests. After him, poets, mythographs, astrologists and naturalists contributed extra details about this fabulous bird some are consistent with each other, others not. The legend focuses on the death and re-birth of the bird. It is alone of its kind and consequently cannot reproduce as other animals do. When it feels death approaching, it gathers aromatic plants which it turns into a sort of nest. The new phoenix is born in receipt of its genitor's corpse, it seals it inside a hollow myrrh tree trunk and carries it to a sanctuary where he lays it on the altar of the Sun where it is to be burnt by the god's priests. As to the sanctuary associated to the phoenix, it is, according to Herodotus, the temple of Heliopolis, that of Hyperion according to Ovid or the fabulous island of Panchaea for Pliny the elder.
