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73.
There is another sacred bird, too, whose name is phoenix. I myself have never seen it, only pictures of it; for the bird seldom comes into Egypt: once in five hundred years, as the people of Heliopolis say.
[2]
It is said that the phoenix comes when his father dies. If the picture truly shows his size and appearance, his plumage is partly golden and partly red. He is most like an eagle in shape and size.
[3]
What they say this bird manages to do is incredible to me. Flying from Arabia to the temple of the sun, they say, he conveys his father encased in myrrh and buries him at the temple of the Sun.
[4]
This is how he conveys him: he first molds an egg of myrrh as heavy as he can carry, then tries lifting it, and when he has tried it, he then hollows out the egg and puts his father into it, and plasters over with more myrrh the hollow of the egg into which he has put his father, which is the same in weight with his father lying in it, and he conveys him encased to the temple of the Sun in Egypt. This is what they say this bird does.
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
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References (21 total)
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- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(19):
- LSJ, ἀπο-πειράομαι
- LSJ, βάρος
- LSJ, ἔγκειμαι
- LSJ, ἐγκοιλ-αίνω
- LSJ, ἐμ-πλάσσω
- LSJ, ἐντίθημι
- LSJ, ἐπιφοιτ-άω
- LSJ, εἰ
- LSJ, φοῖνιξ
- LSJ, γρα^φ-ή
- LSJ, κοιλ-αίνω
- LSJ, ὅσος
- LSJ, παρόμοι-ος
- LSJ, περιήγ-ησις
- LSJ, πτερόν
- LSJ, σπα?́ν-ιος
- LSJ, τοιόσδε
- LSJ, ᾠόν
- LSJ, χρυ_σόκομ-ος
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