Phœnix

Phœnix, the name of a mythical Egyptian bird, supposed by some to be a kind of plover, like the kibitz, often depicted with human arms, and called in hieroglyphs rekh. Others consider it to be the bennu, or nycticorax, a bird sacred to Osiris. It visited Egypt after the death of its father, and entered the shrine particularly dedicated to it at Heliopolis, and there buried its parent, putting the body into an egg or case made of myrrh, and then closing up the egg. Another account is that the Phœnix, when about to die, made a nest for itself in Arabia, from which a new Phœnix sprung of itself. This bird proceeded to Heliopolis, and there burned and buried its father. But the more popularly-known version is that the Phœnix burned itself, and a new and young Phœnix sprang from the ashes. The Phœnix was, according to the most authentic accounts, supposed to visit Egypt every 500 years; the precise period, however, was not known at Heliopolis, and was a subject of contention till its appearance. The connection of the Phœnix period with that of the Sothiac cycle appears to be generally received by chronologists, as well as the statement that it designated the soul and the inundation of the Nile. A great difference of opinion has prevailed about the Phœnix period—a cycle generally of 500 years, but varying also from 250 to 7000 years. Lepsius makes it a cycle of 1500 years. The Phœnix was fabled to have four times appeared in Egypt. For a long and serious argument by a fellow of an Oxford college in 1840 in favour of the existence of the phoenix, see Notes and Queries for 22d December 1882, p. 481. He followed Clement, Tertulian, Epiphanius, and other church fathers.