Phoenix bird
The Phoenix is a mythical bird found in various cultures, often symbolizing renewal and rebirth.
According to legend, the Phoenix is known to live for several hundred years before it sets itself on fire, only to be reborn from its ashes. This cycle of death and rebirth signifies immortality and the idea that after destruction, new beginnings can arise. The Phoenix is often associated with the sun and represents hope and resilience. Its imagery is popular in literature, art, and various cultural references.
Phoenix bird in Ancient Egypt
In ancient Egyptian mythology and in myths derived from it, the Phoenix is a female mythical sacred firebird with beautiful gold and red plumage. Said to live for 500 or 1461 years (depending on the source), at the end of its life-cycle the phoenix builds itself a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix arises. The new phoenix embalms the ashes of the old phoenix in an egg made of myrrh and deposits it in Heliopolis (“the city of the sun” in Greek), located in Egypt. The bird was also said to regenerate when hurt or wounded by a foe, thus being almost immortal and invincible – a symbol of fire and divinity.
Originally, the phoenix was identified by the Egyptians as a stork or heron-like bird called a bennu, known from the Book of the Dead and other Egyptian texts as one of the sacred symbols of worship at Heliopolis, closely associated with the rising sun and the Egyptian sun-god Ra.
Phoenix bird in Greece and Rome
The Greeks adapted the word bennu, and identified it with their own word phoenix meaning the color purple-red or crimson. They and the Romans subsequently pictured the bird more like a peacock or an eagle.
According to Herodotus and Plutarch, it is a migratory bird of Ethiopian origin, endowed with extraordinary longevity, and which has the power, after having been consumed in a bonfire, to be reborn from its own ashes, so its symbolism appears clear: resurrection and immortality, cyclical resurgence.
Phoenix in Christian art
The Phoenix became popular in early Christian art, literature and Christian symbolism, as a symbol of Christ, and further, represented the resurrection, immortality, and the life-after-death of Jesus Christ.
