The Phoenix

The Phoenix ( ancient Greek : φοῖνιξ 1 2 , romanization : Phoinix , pronunciation : pʰó͜ɪnikʰs (classic), pʰyːnikʰs (Koine), ɸyniks (Byzantine)) for the Bennu Egyptian, is a mythological bird the size of an eagle , red plumage, incandescent orange and yellow, beak and strong claws. It was a fabulous bird that was consumed by fire action every 500 years and then rise from the ashes. According to some myths, he lived in a region that included the area of the Middle East and India , reaching Egypt , in North Africa . Very present in the Arabic poetry (In Arabic : العنقاء Al Anka ).

Mythology

The myth of the phoenix, fed various religious doctrines and conceptions of survival in the Beyond , as the Phoenix die to be reborn in all his glory. According to myth, he had several strange gifts, like virtue that their tears were healing, extraordinary force, fire control and great physical strength. In ancient Egypt it was called Bennu and was associated with the flooding of the Nile , the resurrection, and the sun. The Phoenix has been a symbol of physical and spiritual body, the power of fire , the purification , and immortality. For Herodotus, Pliny the Elder and Epifanio de Salamina, this sacred bird was traveling to Egypt every five hundred years, and appeared in the city of Heliopolis , carrying on his shoulders the body of his father, where this was going to die, to deposit it in the Sun temple door.

Probably the legend of the Phoenix went from the Egyptian Greco - Roman tradition through the historian Herodotus (484-425 BC.), Who tells their stories that traveled to Egypt and met Egyptian priests of Heliopolis .

Another sacred bird is there that I have only seen in painting, whose name is the phoenix. Rare are, indeed, the times can be seen, and so from time to time, which the Heliopolis only comes to Egypt every five hundred years to know when his father died. If your size and shape is as described by its nickname and figure are very similar to those of eagle feathers and golden part, partly crimson color. Such are the wonders that it tell us that although my little worthy of faith, not omit the referring them .

To move the corpse of his father from Arabia to the temple of the Sun, it uses the next maneuver: form primarily a solid egg of myrrh as big as his forces reached to take it , testing its weight after formed to experiment with them if compatible; It is going after draining to open a hole where you can encase the body of his father; which fits with another portion of myrrh and mobbing her concavity, until the egg weight pregnant with the body equal to that when solid had; closed after opening, loaded with its egg, and brings to Temple of the Sun in Egypt. Here, whatever it may be, what of that bird concerned.

Herodotus. 3

Henceforth, the myth appears in works of various classical authors: the naturalist Pliny the Elder ( Naturalis Historia , Book X, Chapter II. 4 ), the writer Lucian , the rhetoricianSeneca , and poets Ovid and Claudio Claudiano or