The phoenix-a Greek word meaning “reddish-purple”-turns up first in a riddle by Hesiod. The tale may have evolved from the Egyptian Benu, a sacred bird mentioned in the Book of the Dead that is associated with the sun god Ra and looks like a heron in hieroglyphics-or it may have been mistaken for a cousin by Egyptologists overeager to make a connection. The bird’s features have changed over the centuries, but most agree it’s an eagle-like bird with shining red, golden, and purple plumes. A new, young phoenix emerges from the ashes and wings back to Arabia to live another life cycle. The sun ignites the nest and the old phoenix dies in flames. ![]() The fabled bird is said to live 500 years or more, and when the old bird is tired, it flies from Arabia to land in Heliopolis, Egypt, the “City of the Sun.” There, it gathers cinnamon twigs and resin to build a nest of spices atop the Temple of the Sun. The Greeks rooted the tale of the phoenix in Western imagination more than 2,500 years ago, but its story be Nigg is writing a book about the phoenix and was just finishing chapter 19 of 20 when I called his home. He’s author of The Book of Fabulous Beasts: A Treasury of Writing from Ancient Times to the Present-and is known as the Joseph Campbell of fantastical animals. One brief entry even said: “There is so much rich history about the phoenix, its story deserves a book of its own.”Įnter Joseph Nigg, perhaps the world’s sole phoenix scholar. The fabled bird is so thoroughly entwined in our culture that most people have heard of it, but no one seems to know much about it-“Oh, yeah, it’s that bird that burns up and rises from the ashes, like in the Harry Potter books.” Snazzy new Web sites and dusty library reference books don’t offer much more. ![]() Unraveling the legend of the phoenix is trickier than it might seem.
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