Dear Friends of ancient mythology! Most of us know the Phoenix from the FEL TEMP REPARATIO coins of the Late Roman empire. Here I want to share an article about the origin of the Phoenix from Egypt. The coin: Egypt, Alexandria, Antoninus Pius, AD 138-161 AE - tetradrachm, 11.44g, 22mm, 180° struck AD 138/9 (RY 2) obv. [AV]T [K T AIΛ AΔP] - [AN]TΩN[INOC EVCEB] Bare head r. rev. AI - ΩN Phoenix, nimbate, stg. r. in l. and r. field L - B (year 2) ref. Milne 1603; Geissen 1291; Dattari 2430; Kampmann 35.2 Rare, F+, slightly porous pedigree: ex CNG electronic auction 219, lot 386 ex coll. Jörg Möller Note: AIΩN = eternity Mythology: The origin of the mythology of the wonder bird Phoenix can be found in Egypt. There the bird benu, a purple heron, played an important role. During the Nile flood this beautiful blue bird sat on a high place and collected the sunbeams over the water with its shining feathers. Therefore he was associated with Ra, the sun god, as whose soul he was considered. He was especially worshipped in Heliopolis (the city of the sun). According to a Heliopolitan legend, Benu created himself from the fire that burned on the holy jsd tree in the consecrated precinct of the Ra Temple. He then settled on a column called the benben stone, which the priests showed visitors as the holiest place in the world. In another myth the famous bird was placed to Osiris, who had once renewed himself. Benu had sprung from his heart. The name Benu probably comes from Egyptian weben, which means ascend or shine. In the last period the hieroglyph of the bird was used directly for the sun god. As a symbol of the rising and setting of the sun, Benu was also the lord of the royal throne jubilee. And of course he was in connection with the Nile flood and creation at all. During the Flood standing alone on a single high rock, the Heron represented the first life that appeared on the primitive hill that rose as the first creation out of the chaos of water. This hill was also called ben-ben, which was the cry of Benus at the creation of the world and thus marked the beginning of time. Thus Benu was also the God of time and its subdivisions, of hours, days, nights, weeks and years. He was early connected with the calendar and the temple of Benu was famous for its time measuring instruments (Klepshydrae, water clocks) and his priest was responsible for the calendar. The Phoenix was mentioned for the first time by Hesiod (ca. 700 BC), who extended his life into monstrosity: He should live 972 human ages, 100000 years! And then there is the famous description of Herodotus (2, 73), which was probably based on Hekataios: "There (in Egypt) there is also a holy bird, which is called Phoenix, but which I myself have seen only on pictures, because it comes very rarely to Egypt, at intervals of 500 years, as the people of Heliopolis say. They say that he always comes when his father dies. And if he really looks like in the pictures then he has about the size and appearance of an eagle except that some of his feathers are golden and others are red. This bird, they say (but I can't believe this story), now does this: Coming from Arabia he carries his dead father covered with myrrh to the Temple of the Sun and buries him there. And this is how he does it: He forms an egg out of myrrh as big as he can carry it right now, and then he makes an attempt to lift it, and if that succeeds, he hollows out this egg and puts his father in there and closes the opening again. Then he brings the whole thing to Egypt to the Temple of the Sun in Heliopolis." Only later sources tell that the Phoenix burns himself and is then reborn from the flames. Unfortunately I didn't find out when this variation came from. Anyway it is this Greek legend which is the most widespread until our time. In this form it also appears in the Bible (Ezekiel). Therefore the Greek Phoenix should be clearly distinguished from the Egyptian one! Ovid lets Pythagoras say that Phoenix is the only bird that renews itself. Tacitus mentions in his Annals (6.28) the appearance of the Phoenix in the year 34 A.D. Since this had already happened 250 years after his last appearance under Ptolemaios III, there was cause for discussions about the duration of a Phoenix period, which was equated by some with the Sothis period of 1461 years. A short time later, during the reign of Claudius, a Phoenix appeared again, which was even shown in Rome, but Pliny the Elder writes that this probably wasn't the real one (NH, 10.3-5). So the problem arose to distinguish real from fake birds! Pliny is said to have written that the bird would die in a nest of cinnamon and similarly fragrant herbs and then a new Phoenix would be born from the bones of the dead bird. Martial then used the Phoenix as the first symbol for Rome's eternity (Epigrams 5.7). And in this sense also the Phoenix on the coins of the late Roman series FEL TEMP REPARATIO has to be seen as a resurrection of the eternal Rome. Philostratus (ca. 170 AD), who wrote the biography of Apollonius of Tyana, writes of the Phoenix that he had lived in India, but would emigrate to Egypt every 500 years. This view is obviously influenced by Garudas, the bird of the Hindu god Vishnu. Lactantius and Claudian have written long poems about the Phoenix. The Egyptian Phoenix became very popular in the early Christian church, in art as well in literature and symbolism. So the first Christians made the Phoenix the symbol of the resurrection, of life after death and of eternal life, yes the symbol for Christ himself. One of the early church fathers, Flavius Clemens, writes a longer chapter about the Phoenix. But probably the greatest influence in this sense had the Physiologus, an anonymous work of the 4th century AD, which probably originated in an Alexandrian Christian community and was widespread in the Middle Ages. He writes: "The Phoenix now becomes the symbol of our Redeemer; for he also came down from the heavens and brought his two wings full of fragrance, that is to say full of excellence, i.e. full of sublime divine words, so that we too at prayer spread our hands and bring upwards spiritual fragrance by conduct of life pleasing in the sight of God." Background: An ancient explanation for the Egyptian Phoenix was a specific bird species of East Africa. This bird nests on salt flats that are too hot for its eggs or chicks to survive; it builds a mound large enough to support its egg, which it lays in that marginally cooler location. The convection currents around these mounds resembles the turbulence of a flame. The Benu was a large imaginary bird resembling a heron. The bird may be modeled on the gray heron (Ardea cinera) or the larger Goliath heron (Ardea goliath) that lives on the coast of the Red Sea. Archaelogists have found the remains of a much larger heron that lived in the Persian Gulf area 5000 years ago. There is some speculation that this bird may have been seen by Egyptian travelers and sparked the legend of a very large heron seen once every 500 years in Egypt. It had a two long feathers on the crest of it's head and was often crowned with the Atef crown of Osiris (the White Crown with two ostrich plumes on either side) or with the disk of the sun. Another suggested inspiration for the mythical Phoenix, and various other mythical birds that are closely associated with the sun, is the total eclipse of the sun. During some total solar eclipses the sun's corona displays a distinctly bird-like form that almost certainly inspired the winged sun disk symbols of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. History of Art: On ancient pictures, especially on coins of the Imperial Era like here from Alexandria, the Phoenix - described by Herodot as an eagle-like bird - is depicted as a winged animal with long stilts with a nimbus or an aureole around its head, sign for eternity. The bird symbolized the change of an era. In Christian art the Phoenix is known in connection with pictures of Christ or the paradise, e.g. on the mosaic in the apsis of SS. Cosma e Damiano in Rome from AD 526-530, in S. Clemente, S. Prassede and other churches, and already in the 3rd century AD the Phoenix which burnt and renewed itself was the symbol of resurrection as in the Priscilla catacomb in Rome. The symbolic content of resurrection and eternity was taken up again in Renaissance. I have added the following pics: (1) the pic of an Egyptian wall painting showing a boat wit the Benu who is wearing the sun disk on his head. We can see the distinct similarity with an heron. (2) the detail of the mosaic in the apsis of S.Prassede in Rome. You can see the Phoenix with a nimbus seated on a palm. (3) the pic of a wall painting from the Priscilla catacomb, showing three children standing in a furnace with the Phoenix above as symbol of resurrection. Sources: (1) Herodot, The Histories II, 73 (2) Tacitus, Annales (3) Ovid, Metamorphoses (4) Physiologus, Chapt.7 (5) Der Kleine Pauly (6) Aghion/Barbillon/Lissarrague, Lexikon der antiken Götter und Heroen in der Kunst, 1994 (7) Jefferson Monnet, The Benu (Bennu) (online) (8) Mattingly, FEL TEMP REPARATIO (9) http://www.egyptianmyths.net/phoenix.htm (10) http://www.livius.org/phi-php/phoenix/phoenix.html (11) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phoenix_(mythology)&oldid=93996420 (12) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology) Excursion: The Sothic Cycle No we turn towards the second theme on this coin: The Sothic Cycle. Therefore back to this remarkable coin: LB, the 2nd year of the reign of Antoninus Pius (AD 139), marks according to the Roman writer Censorinus the renewal of the Great Sothic Cycle, a cycle of 1461 years beginning always in the moment when the Sirius (Greek Sothis) rises from the horizon at the same point as the sun. The Egyptian Calendar: In early times of the Egyptian calendar the lunar cycles were summarized from I to XII as lunar years and continously enumerated, careless of the course of the natural year. But because the strictly performed administration, already introduced in the 1st dynasty, needed a strict obedience of the dates of irrigation, tillage and appearance, the Egyptians introduced schematic months existing of 3 decades of days each which could counted easily with one's own fingers. The beginning of this fixed truncated year was proclaimed publicly and probably fell on the day of the opening of the upper floodgates of the flooding basins (around August 26. Gregorganian), when the height of the water-level, the water delivery and the enhancement of mud in Upper Egypt have reached their optimum (Pauly). So the Neilotic year was connected most closely to the inundation of the Nile. Besides this Neilotic year there was already early in 3rd century BC a year connected to the rise of the Sirius (in that time around the midsummer and the green coloration of the Nile). It was devided in three(!) seasons of equal length, so-called tetramenia: echet (inundation), projet (winter) and shomu (sommer). A date was written e.g. 'II echet, 2 decades + 4 days'. This year had 365 days where the last 5 days (epagomenes) were seen as sinister. Plutarch has delivered the following myth: God Set and Nut, the goddess of heaven, had clandestinely communed with each other. But the sun cursed Nut that her children should be borne neither in a month nor a year. Nut asked the wise Thot for advice. And Thot played a game of dice with the moon goddess and won the 72th part of each day of the 360 days year, making 5 days and these days were added to the year after the 12 months. Thus the solar year won 5 days more than the old year and the lunar year lost 5 days and came to 355 days. And so the 5 posthumous gods could enter the world. All other fixed year, the annee sacree, the canopic year, the Alexandrian year, the Coptic year, and others, are years derived from the Neilotic and Sothic year standing in a fixed relation to the original years (Pauly). Sothis: Sothis (Egyptian spdt) originally was a female Egyptian deity embodying the bluish gleaming dog star Sirius (Canicula) which was called Sothis by the Greeks. Because Sothis could be seen directly before the beginning of the inundation of the Nile at the morning sky she was seen as bringer of the flooding of the Nile which was crucial for Egypt. The Egyptians made the rise of Sothis to the beginning of the year. But because the Egyptian calendar year defined by the rise of Sothis was about 1/4 of a day too short the rise of Sothis was wandering in about 1460 years once through the entire year. This is the so-called 'Sothis Cycle', a term from a later time; the ancient Egypts have not used it! Because according to the Roman writer Censorinus ('De Die Natali', AD 238) in AD 139 (see at our coin!) a new Sothis Cycle began we can consider by back-calculation c.2768 BC as probable date of the introduction of the Egyptian calendar (about the beginning of the 2nd dynasty). Already in the middle of the 3rd millenium BC the Egyptians probably recognized that their systematized calendar year of 365 days had an increasing discrepancy to the heliactic rise of the Sirius, the star which indiccated the inundation of the Nile. In this way the natural year of 365 1/4 days and a calendar year of 365 days were opposing each other. This discrepancy made in 4 years a difference of one day between natural year and calendar year until 1460 years later both years coincided again. This discrepancy was never corrected in the time of the Pharaohs. The attempt to introduce a 6th leap day (epagomenon) under Ptolemaios III failed and even after the finally calendar reform by Augustus the priests in the Egyptian temples stick to the old calendar still for a long time. It was probably the authority of the priesthood that inhibited a calendar reform. So the kings were forced to swear an oath before their coronation that they never would try to introduce leap days or months or to alter anything of the established year of 365 days! The ancient Egyptians celebrated hiliariously the day of the reappearance of Sirius over the morning horizon after an invisibility lasting about 65 to 70 days with the Sothis festival. The dates of the heliactic Sirius rise therefore represent an important pillar of the ancient Egyptian royal chronology and are in connection with the Sothis cycle of great historical importance. Please note: These can only be short remarks because this subject is very sophisticated especially because there were for a long time scholarly oppositions against the interpretation of the Sothis Cycle. Therefore for further studies I recommand the articles of Wikipedia which I have cited below. At least some Notes on the Conception of Time: The Egyptian view of time was cyclical. Everything repeats itself again and again for eternal times. But this does not happen in a tiring circle as we know it from Buddhism, but rather as in a spiral: everything repeats itself, spring, summer, autumn, birth and death, a new king, but it is every time a new year and a new king, which brings new hope. I would like to call this a natural understanding of time. In contrast to this is our Christian conception of time, which is linear-eschatological. It goes straight towards a distant goal, the doom of this world on the last day (eschaton) and then the following Universal Judgment. This judgment over good and evil also existed in ancient Egypt, but not on the last day of the world, but with every human being after his death. I have added a picture that shows how the Egyptian priests observe the heliacal rise of Sirius (Sothis), the preacher of the Nile flood on whom Egypt's fate depended until the construction of the Aswan Dam. You can see the Sirius left beneath the Orion with its three girdle stars. Sources: (1) Der Kleine Pauly (2) James P.Allen, Middle Egyptian: An introduction to the language and culture of hieroglyphs, pp.104-106 (3) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ägyptischer_Kalender (4) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sothis-Zyklus (5) http://www.astronomische-vereinigung-- - (6) augsburg.de/artikel/astronomiegeschichte/fruehe-kulturen/teil-2-aegypten/ Best regards
Great article @Jochen ! I am reminded of first year hieroglyphics at Berkeley (I took three years of middle egyptian, hieratic, and demotic.) iw weben ra m pet "Ra rises in the sky" Eventually we got around to translating the Rosetta Stone, but that wasn't in the first year.
Thank you for your answer. I have not the luck to learn Egyptian hieroglyphics although I was always interested since I have read Ceram's "Götter, Gräber und Gelehrte". Jochen
Dear 7Calbrey! Thank you for your post. The connection of Phoenix to Phoenicia is very interesting. I haven't heard of it yet. But I want to take care of it. Jochen
Thanks @Jochen for the write-up! I do not yet have a coin with a phoenix on it but I really like them. I also really enjoy Antonius Pius coins so this post was a double win for me
Here's an interesting photo of a jug from Cyprus dating back to the 7th century B.C. The Bird and Lotus plant on that jug " show Phoenician influence". Source : Encyclopedia Americana (Metropolitan Museum of Art- Cesnola.)
Indeed .. I'm very interested in coin-brother Jochen's write-ups about ancient Mythology since it represents ancient History on a wide scale. Personally and after long years of translation and researches in the tourism sector, I could sum up a great deal of info and references about Phoenician Mythology. Cuniform on Papyrus revealing the whole Phoenician Mythology was found out several decades ago in Palmyra (Tadmur) and/or Ugharit (Ras Shamra) in Syria which includes some Phoenician cities like Arados and Marathos. Hope I can be of modest help or assistance in the coming days. Cheers..
“it also appears in the Bible (Ezekiel)”: sorry, but no. The Ezekiels’ text about the phoenix does not belong to the prophet Ezekiel, but to Ezekiel the Tragedian (a Jewish Greek-speaking author living in Egypt, during approximatively the 3rd c. BCE). It is a fragment of a drama entitled Exagoge, “Exodus”, about Moses leaving Egypt with his people and probably encountering the bird in a grove of the homonymous palm trees “phoenix dactylifera”. And there is nowhere a phoenix bird to be seen in the Bible ; only some late Jewish versions translated a problematic word by “phoenix bird” in Job 29:18, when the Greek and Latin versions have “palm tree”. See this online article from 2014: https://journals.openedition.org/kentron/463.
For pic3, it is not a phoenix, but the dove with an olive branch in the beak, representing the Holy Spirit.
