Lecture V. Animal Worship. 111
And, it must be remembered, it is only in Chaldæa that they
find their explanation. Here they originated in the religious and
cosmological ideas associated with the physical features of the
country. The sphinx of Giza still guards the desert of Giza, [120]
because ages ago the flooding waves of the Persian Gulf made
the Babylonians believe that the world had arisen out of a watery
chaos peopled by unformed creatures of monstrous shape.
The case of the phœnix orbennuis somewhat different. Here
we have to do not with a fabulous monster, but with an existing
bird of which a fabulous story was told. The bird was not an
eagle, as Herodotos supposed, but a heron, which at an early
date seems to have been confounded with the crested ibis, the
symbol of thekhuor luminous soul. It was, in fact, the spirit of
the sun-god, and later legends declared that it stood and sang on
the top of a tree at Heliopolis, while a flame burst forth beside it,
and the sun rose from the morning sky. With sunset it became
an Osiris, whose mummy was interred at Heliopolis, to awake
again to life with the first rays of the rising sun. It was thus for
Christian writers an emblem of the resurrection, and as such its
story is told by St. Clement of Rome:^81 “There is a certain bird
which is called the phœnix. This is the only one of its kind, and it
lives five hundred years. When the time of its dissolution draws
near that it must die, it builds itself a nest of frankincense and
myrrh and other spices, into which, when the time is fulfilled, it
enters and dies. But as the flesh decays a certain kind of worm
is produced, which, being nourished by the juices of the dead
bird, brings forth feathers. Then, when it has acquired strength,
it takes up the nest in which are the bones of its parent, and,
bearing these, it passes from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to
the city called Heliopolis. And, flying in open day in the sight of
all men, it places them on the altar of the sun, and, having done
this, it hastens back to its former abode. The priests then inspect
(^81) Ep. ad Cor.25.