The phoenix, sometimes written phœnix (from ancient Greek: φοῖνιξ / phoînix), in the probable sense of “blood red”, is a mythical bird, endowed with great longevity and characterized by its power to be reborn either from its own corpse or after being consumed in flames. It thus symbolizes the cycle of death and resurrection. It is called by a modern periphrase “the firebird” (not to be confused however with the creature of the Slavic legend).
Belonging to Greco-Roman antiquity, the phoenix is more or less comparable to fabulous birds of Persian mythology (the Simurgh or Rokh), Chinese (the Vermilion Bird and the Fenghuang), Amerindian (the Thunderbird), Aboriginal in Australia (the Minka Bird) or Japanese mythology (the Hōo)
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the phoenix originated in Arabia and was linked to the cult of the Sun in the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, where it was venerated: he describes it as a kind of eagle with red and gold plumage. Other authors show it as multicolored, such as Solinus, compiler of Pliny the Elder (Polyhistor, chapter 34).
“Here too is born the phoenix, which has the size of the eagle, the head adorned with feathers forming a cone, wattles at the throat, the neck radiating gold, the rest of the body of purple color, if not the tail, which is of bright azure and strewn with feathers incarnate. “
There was only one phoenix at a time, which lived from five hundred years to thousands of years according to the authors.
It reproduces itself identically: feeling its end coming, it builds a nest of herbs, cinnamon, frankincense and others, where it burns. From the ashes a chick is reborn. But the oldest tradition (the Greek historian Herodotus) is less poetic: he is reborn from his corpse.
Phoenix Etymology
The Greek term φοῖνιξ / phoînix has several meanings: it designates the bird itself, but also the red color, the toponym and the ethnonym “Phoenician”, and phoenix dactylifera, the date palm. Its etymology remains debated: an Egyptian origin has been proposed — the name of the sacred heron bnu (pronounced *boin-?), adapted into phoenix by Greek — or a Semitic origin, more particularly Phoenician, or a Greek origin (“blood red”). The Phoenicians were the renowned producers of a purple dye made from the murex shell, abundant on the shores of the Mediterranean.
By region and era
Phoenix in Ancient Greece
The first mention is in an enigmatic fragment attributed to Hesiod:
“The babbling crow lives nine generations of flourishing men of youth; The deer lives four times more than the crow; the raven ages during three deer ages; the phoenix lives nine ages of the raven and we live ten ages of phoenix, we nymphs with beautiful hair, daughters of Zeus armed with the aegide.”
Herodotus, in Book II of Histories (circa 445 BC), is the first to give the name phoenix to one of the sacred birds of Egypt: the benu. This heron perched on the benben stone or on the willow of Heliopolis, a manifestation of the solar gods Ra and Osiris. The Greek historian provides some elements of the myth:
“We also put another bird called a phoenix in the same class. I have only seen it in painting; it is rarely seen; and, if the Heliopolitans are to be believed, he only shows himself in their country every five hundred years, when his father dies. If it resembles its portrait, its wings are partly gold and partly red, and it is entirely consistent with the eagle in figure and detailed description. There is a peculiarity that seems incredible to me. He departs, say the Egyptians, from Arabia, goes to the temple of the Sun with the body of his father, which he carries wrapped in myrrh, and gives him burial in this temple. Here is how: he makes with myrrh an egg-shaped mass, of the weight he thinks he can carry, lifts it, and tries if it is not too heavy; Then, when he has finished these tests, he digs this egg, introduces his father, then he closes the opening with myrrh: this egg is then of the same weight as when the mass was whole. When he has, I say, shut it up, he carries it to Egypt in the temple of the Sun.”
Herodotus, who could draw his information from Hecataeus of Miletus, considers the phoenix to be a real bird, and some details do not fit with Egyptian conceptions, such as the appearance every 500 years. A misunderstanding of the symbol has been suggested: Herodotus would have interpreted as a physical filiation the relationship between the benou and the deities of which he is the bâ (the temporary manifestation). It has also been thought that this phoenix comes from the oriental myth of the bird of the sun, symbolizing the “great year”, that is to say, the time necessary for a complete equinoctial cycle; its association with the Egyptian Sothiac period would be later, datable to the Roman Empire, under the Antonines.
Roman Empire
In Ovid (The Metamorphoses, Book 15), in Pliny the Elder (Natural History, c. 77, passim) and in Tacitus (Annals, ii century, Book 6, 28), the phoenix decomposes to be reborn, as in Herodotus; then, in Martial (Epigrams, between 85 and about 102, Book 5) and Stace (The Silves, probably between 89 and 96, Books 2, 3 and 5) appears the theme of the pyre and its spices, probably by analogy with the funerary practices of the Romans. The effigy of the phoenix as a symbol of the golden age, bliss or renewal of times, appears on imperial coins from Trajan to Constantine I and his sons.
“There is only one bird that finds life in its death, and that recreates itself: the Assyrians call it phoenix; He lives neither of herbs nor fruits, but of the tears of incense and the juices of amome. After filling the course of five long centuries on the trembling crown of a palm tree, he builds a nest with his beak and nails; he forms a bed of nard, cinnamon, golden myrrh and cinnamon, lies down on this pyre, and ends his life in the midst of perfumes; Then, from its ashes, it is said, a young phoenix is reborn, destined to live the same number of centuries. As soon as age has given him the strength to support a burden, he removes the nest that was both his cradle and his father’s grave; and, from a swift wing, comes into the city of the sun; He places it at the sacred door of the temple.”
Ovid, The Metamorphoses
Jewish culture
The Midrash Rabbah, the rabbinic commentary on Genesis, records that when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, all animals also ate of the forbidden fruit and thus death was decreed for all; yet only one bird called Kohl (עוף החול) did not eat of this fruit. He was rewarded with eternal life. And Rabbi Yanay explains that his life unfolds like this: he knows a period of a thousand years at the end of which fire springs from his nest and consumes it, leaving only an egg from which he grows again. It is not to be confused with the mythological Ziz.
Christian culture
In the first century, Clement of Rome, third bishop of Rome after St. Peter, speaks of this bird in chapter XXV of one of the Epistles to the Corinthians attributed to him. The phoenix becomes the symbol of the resurrection of Christ, as well as an emblem of the Roman Empire. The Christian interpretation has been largely inspired by the pagan myth where the phoenix refers to an immanent cycle, unlike Christian transcendence and linear time.
The Physiologos, an anonymous Christian bestiary of the second or fourth century delivering moralistic interpretations on the animals described, also links the resurrection of the phoenix to that of Christ.
In the XIIIs, Brunetto Latini, in the first book of his Li livres dou Tresor (de), devotes a section of his bestiary to the phoenix, taking up what the ancient authors said:
“The phoenix is a bird of Arabia such as there is no more than one in the whole world: it is as big as an eagle, but it has a crest on each side under the jaw, and the feathers, all around its neck, shine like fine Arabian gold: but below, the rest of the body up to the tail is pink. And some people say that he lives five hundred and forty years, and others say that his life lasts a thousand years and more: but most people say that he ages in the space of five hundred years. And when he has lived all this time, his nature warns him and draws him to death. And to regain life, he goes to a delicious tree with a delectable scent: he makes a small pile of its branches and sets them on fire, then he enters this pyre just as the sun rises. And once it is burned, that same day, a small worm endowed with life comes out of its ashes: the second day after birth, it looks like a little chick; On the third day, he has become as tall and strong as he should be, and he immediately flies to the place where his home is.”
Brunetto Latini, translation by Gabriel Bianciotto, The Book of Treasure, Book I, CLXIII, read online, in Old French.
Jean de Mandeville describes Egypt in his Book of the Wonders of the World (1357) and, in particular, the city of Heliopolis, which allows him to evoke the phoenix:
“In Egypt is the city of Heliopolis, that is to say, the city of the Sun. In that city there is a temple, made round after the shape of the Temple of Jerusalem. The priests of that temple have all their writings, under the date of the fowl that is clept phoenix; and there is none but one in all the world. And he cometh to burn himself upon the altar of that temple at the end of five hundred year; for so long he liveth. And at the five hundred years’ end, the priests array their altar honestly, and put thereupon spices and sulfur vif and other things that will burn lightly; and then the bird phoenix cometh and burneth himself to ashes. And the first day next after, men find in the ashes a worm; and the second day next after, men find a bird quick and perfect; and the third day next after, he flieth his way. And so there is no more birds of that kind in all the world, but it alone, and truly that is a great miracle of God. And men may well liken that bird unto God, because that there is no God but one; and also, that our Lord arose from death to life the third day. This bird men see often-time fly in those countries; and he is not mickle more than an eagle. And he hath a crest of feathers upon his head more great than the peacock hath; and is neck his yellow after color of an oriel that is a stone well shining, and his beak is colored blue as ind; and his wings be of purple colour, and his tail is barred overthwart with green and yellow and red. And he is a full fair bird to look upon, against the sun, for he shineth full gloriously and nobly.”
Ornithological point of view
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) saw in him the golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus). It has also been identified with the bird of paradise and the flamingo.
Carl von Linnaeus, in his classification of living beings, evokes mythological creatures such as the troglodyte, the satyr, the hydra, the phoenix (Amoenitates academicae, 1763). He says of the latter: “A species of bird of which there is only one individual in the world, and which, when decrepit, is reborn, rejuvenated, according to legend, from a pyre of aromatic plants, to relive the happy times of yesteryear.”
Phoenix in arts and culture
Heraldic
The phoenix, an imaginary heraldic figure, is a bird on a burning pyre. It is very similar to the heraldic eagle and is even sometimes defined as one of its variants. He is represented from the front, head in profile, wings extended, on his pyre, called “immortality”.
Opposite the arms of the Malet de Lussart: “azure to a phoenix on its immortality, looking at the sun, all golden”, which illustrates well the kinship with the eagle, reputed to be the only one capable of looking the sun in the face in Greek mythology.
Another example of the Phoenix is the coat of arms of the commune of Sermaize-les-Bains.
The Fénix also appears on the coat of arms of the naçào, the Portuguese Jewish nation in Amsterdam, which had to flee the Spanish and then Portuguese Inquisition, “leaving feathers”, to take refuge in the more tolerant lands of the United Provinces, from the fifteenth century.
The Phoenix is also the emblem of American cities, such as San Francisco in California, or Atlanta in Georgia, which have been destroyed by fire during their history.
Literature about the Phoenix
Many ancient authors speak of it at various times and in various genres, from Hesiod and Herodotus for the Greeks, to the Romans, including Pliny the Elder and Tacitus (see above).
Two great poems are dedicated to him, one Christian, the other pagan: the Carmen de ave phoenice, attributed to Lactantius (who lived from 250 to 325), then the Phoenix of Claudian; the bird is also present in his unfinished epic De raptu Proserpinae (written between 395 and 397).
Dante Alighieri evokes the phoenix in Canto XXIV of Hell (1304-1307 at the earliest), the first part of his Divine Comedy.
During the Renaissance, Guillaume Du Bartas devoted a long development to it in the Fifth Day of La Sepmaine ou la Création du monde (v. 551-598):
“The celeste Phoenix began his work
By the terrestrial Phoenix, adorning with such plumage
Its limbs revived that the annual torch
From Cairan to Fez sees nothing more beautiful.”
Then Rabelais mentions it in Le Cinquième Livre (V, 29, Comment nous visitasmes le pays de Satin), published in 1564:
“I’m going there fourteen Phoenixes. I have seen it in various authors who are only one in everyone, for an age; but, according to my little judgment, those who have written them did not want any other than in the land of tapestry, or even Lactantius Firmian.”
In the eighteenth century, the phoenix feeds the imagination of several authors of fantastic or wonderful stories, for example, Voltaire in the philosophical tale of The Princess of Babylon: a 26,900-year-old Phoenix explains to the heroine that it was born at a time when all animals could talk and converse in peace with men; later, dying, he asks him to carry his ashes to Arabia Happy and to prepare a pyre for him, so that he can be reborn.
In The Book of Imaginary Beings (1957), the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges devotes an entry to the phoenix, listing the evocations of this animal in different works through the centuries. He dedicated another to the Chinese phoenix.
J.K. Rowling, in her bestseller Harry Potter (1997–2007), makes a phoenix named Fumseck the companion of Professor Dumbledore. A feather of this animal was used to make the wands of Harry and Voldemort, his rival. The Order of the Phoenix (title of Volume 5) has its origins in honors in Germany and Greece.
References (sources)
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