194 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



additional particulars. He insists that only one phenix 

 exists at a time, clothed in gorgeous feathers and carrying 

 a plumed head ; and at the close of its long life it builds 

 a nest of frankincense and cassia, on which it dies. 

 From the corpse, as Pliny asserts, is generated a worm 

 that develops into another phenix. This young phenix, 

 when it has grown large enough, makes it its first duty to 

 lay its father's body on the altar in Heliopolis; and 

 Tacitus adds that its body is burned there. The implica- 

 tion in most accounts is that the bird is male (the 

 Egyptians are said to have believed all vultures female), 

 and doubtless the whole conception is a primitive phase 

 of the nature-worship out of which developed the more 

 formal Osiris-legend. 



But the picture has many variants. One is that the 

 phenix subsists on air for 500 years, at the end of which, 

 lading its wings with perfumed gums gathered on Mt. 

 Lebanon (!) it flies to Heliopolis and is burned — itself 

 now, not its parent — into fragrant ashes on the altar of 

 the Sun temple. On the next morning appears a young 

 phenix already feathered, and on the third day, its pinions 

 fully grown, it salutes the priest and flies away. Here 

 we come to the best remembered feature of the mystery, 

 caught and kept alive for us by the poets, such as John 

 Lyly, 49 who in 1591 reminded the world that — 



There is a bird that builds its neast with spice, 

 And built, the Sun to ashes doth her burne, 



Out of whose sinders doth another rise, 



And she by scorching beames to dust doth turne. 



De Kay 18 discourses on these notions in his Bird Gods: 



"In the oldest tombs, discovered lately on the upper Nile by 

 Jacques de Morgan and others, the phenix is seen rising from 



