FABLE AND FOLKLORE 195 



a bed of flames, which may well mean the funeral pyre of the 

 defunct. The inscriptions in question are so early that they 

 belong to a period when the ceremonial of the mummy had not 

 become universal in Egypt, and the conquerors of Egypt, prob- 

 ably a swarm of metal-using foreigners from the valley of the 

 Euphrates, who crossed from Arabia and the Red Sea, were 

 still burning the bodies of their chiefs and kings. The phenix 

 of these inscriptions may indicate the soul of the departed rising 

 from its earthly dross as the soul of Herakles, according to the 

 much later legend in its Greek form, rose from his funeral 

 pyre to join the gods of Olympus." 



Now, whether or not the priests of Heliopolis en- 

 couraged their worshippers to believe that such a creature 

 really existed, they themselves knew well that it was a 

 mere symbol of the sun; and it is easy to identify it with 

 the bird "bennu" spoken of in the Book of the Dead and 

 other Egyptian sacred texts, which unquestionably was 

 a picturesque representative of the sun, rising, pursuing 

 its course, and at regular intervals expiring in the fires of 

 sunset, then renewing itself on the morrow in the flames 

 of sunrise over Arabia. Plentiful evidence that this was 

 perfectly understood in Greece and Italy of the classic 

 age may be read in the works of their essayists and poets. 

 Claudian (365-408), wrote, and Tickell, a British poet, 

 translated into verse, a long poem on the phenix. 

 Petrarch carried their wisdom onward when he declared 

 there could be only one phenix at a time because there 

 was only one sun. 



When the Arabs succeeded the Romans in the Nile 

 Provinces they picked up from the people remnants of the 

 legend, and confused it with their own ancient belief 

 in a creature that resisted burning, by whose existence 

 they accounted for the incombustible property of asbestos, 

 a mineral known to them, but the origin of which was a 

 mystery. It came from the Orient, and some said it was 



