Phoenix
The bird of classical legend that lives for centuries, one at a time, and is reborn from its own death; in Christian writing a figure of the resurrection, and in heraldry a bird rising from flames.
Meaning
The phoenix is a single, long-lived bird that renews itself. Herodotus heard of it from the people of Heliopolis in Egypt as a sacred bird like an eagle, golden and red, that came there once in five hundred years; Ovid and Pliny have it die on a nest of spices and a new bird grow from the body. The flames came later: the Aberdeen Bestiary, made in England about 1200, has the old phoenix fan its own pyre with its wings and rise from the ashes on the ninth day, and that burning bird is the phoenix of heraldry. This page is the classical and European bird. The Chinese bird that Vinycomb calls the fung, one of the four animals said to watch over the Chinese empire, is also called a phoenix in English, but it is a different creature with its own history.
Origin and history
The earliest versions have no fire. Herodotus, who admits he had only seen pictures, was told that the young phoenix carries its dead father from Arabia to the temple of the Sun in Egypt, sealed in an egg of myrrh, a story he found “incredible”. Ovid says the bird lives on frankincense, builds its nest of cassia, spikenard, cinnamon and myrrh, and dies in it, and a little phoenix is born from its body. Pliny tells the same story, adding a small worm that grows from the bones and turns into a bird, and reports that a phoenix was shown in the Comitium in Rome under the emperor Claudius, though “no one” doubted it was a fake.
The Aberdeen Bestiary keeps both versions side by side. On one page the bird builds a pyre of aromatic twigs, turns to the sun and “is consumed in the fire”, rising from its ashes on the ninth day; on the next it dies in a nest of frankincense and myrrh, and a worm grows from its flesh into a new phoenix. Either way, the bestiary says, the phoenix is a figure of Christ, who had “the power to lay down my life and to take it again”.
A Christian emblem
The early Christians read the phoenix as the resurrection. John Vinycomb notes that Tertullian already made it “an image of the resurrection”, and the Aberdeen Bestiary compares it to Christ rising on the third day and to the righteous, who will rise again after death.
Queens’ badges and heraldry
Vinycomb collected royal phoenixes. Mary of Lorraine used a phoenix in flames as her device, and her daughter Mary Queen of Scots took it over with the motto “En ma fin est mon commencement” (In my end is my beginning). A phoenix in flames on a castle was the badge of Jane Seymour, and Elizabeth I put the phoenix on her medals with the motto “Semper eadem”. In heraldry, Vinycomb writes, the phoenix is only ever shown one way, wings spread, rising from flames, and the Apothecaries’ Company took it as its crest.
Read next
- Next in Mythical creatures of Greece and EuropeUnicornA horse-like beast with a single horn on its forehead, described by Greek and Roman writers as an untameable animal of India, made a figure of Christ and purity in the Middle Ages, and the national animal of Scotland’s royal arms.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsInti Raymi (festival of the sun)The Inca festival of the sun, held at the June solstice in Cusco. Banned under Spanish rule, it was revived in 1944 and is staged every 24 June at the Coricancha, the main square and Sacsayhuamán.
See also
Minotaur, Centaur, Chimera, Hydra, Harpy, Siren.
Sources
- Herodotus, Histories 2.73 (tr. A. D. Godley), Herodotus, The Histories, translated by A. D. Godley (1920), 2.73, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, 2.73
- The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books VIII–XV (tr. Henry T. Riley), Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by Henry T. Riley (1851), Project Gutenberg eBook #26073, Project Gutenberg, Book XV
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 10.2 (tr. Bostock and Riley), Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley (1855), book X, chapter 2, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Book X, chapter 2
- Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 55r (University of Aberdeen), Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24, England, c. 1200), folio 55r, “The Phoenix”, transcription and translation, University of Aberdeen, Of the phoenix
- Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 55v (University of Aberdeen), Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24, England, c. 1200), folio 55v, “Phoenix, cont.”, transcription and translation, University of Aberdeen, Phoenix, continued
- Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 56r (University of Aberdeen), Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24, England, c. 1200), folio 56r, “Phoenix, cont.”, transcription and translation, University of Aberdeen, Phoenix, continued
- Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art (John Vinycomb, 1906), John Vinycomb, Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art, with Special Reference to Their Use in British Heraldry (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906), Project Gutenberg, The Phœnix Bird of the Sun, pp. 171–178
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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