Hey dear Hive friends, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you have a day full of positive experiences! In this post I would like to present something about mythology and hope you can learn something new.
Here you can see pictures that I have created with AI and present a phoenix which is a well-known mythical creature from mythology. It is a bird that is often symbolized with rebirth and the ancient Greeks knew it under the name Phoenix, but for the first time this creature appeared in Egyptian mythology under the name Benu. Benu is also often associated with the sun god Ra who is usually in Heliopolis and he lived on the temple of Ra where he built himself a nest. Benu was also often associated with the wrath of Ra and was considered one of his invincible weapons and according to a legend, the bird burned once in the dawn and has risen again rejuvenated.
Since then, the Benu bird has also often been associated with sunrises and every 500 years this legend is said to be repeated and the bird will rise again. The Greeks heard of Benu and took over this mythical creature and called it Phoenix and was also often seen there as a sign of immortality. The Greeks named it after the Phoenicians who are also known as seafarers who settled the area of today's Israel, Lebanon and Syria. The Phoenicians were once more influential than the ancient Greeks and settled many cities on the Mediterranean and they fought for supremacy with the Roman Empire.
In Greek mythology, the story is somewhat different and the ancient Greeks thought that the Phoenix emerged from the ashes of osiris and here you can see connections to Egyptian mythology. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder also described the phoenix and according to the Roman legend, the bird burned itself and then a worm remained from which a new phoenix was born. The phoenix was also known in the Middle Ages and appears in legends and was also associated with rebirth there and also in alchemical symbolism, this mythical creature can also be found and the alchemists associated it with the conversion of metals into gold.
Many thanks you for taking the time to read through my post and I hope you like it and can learn something new about Mythology!