Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/847

P H (E P H O 811 phoenix. The young bird lays his father on the altar in the city of the sun, or burns him there, as Tacitus has it (Ann., vi. 28). The story of the birth and death of the pho3nix has several other forms. According to Horapollo (ii. 57) he casts himself on the ground and receives a wound, from the ichor of which the new phoenix springs ; but the most familiar form of the legend is that in the Physiologus, where the phoenix is described as an Indian bird which subsists on air for 500 years, after which, lading his wings with spices, he flies to Heliopolis, enters the temple there, and is burned to ashes on the altar. Next day the young phoenix is already feathered; on the third day his pinions are full-grown, he salutes the priest and flies away. The period at which the phoenix re appears is very variously stated, some authors giving as much as 1461 or even 7006 years, but 500 years is the period usually named ; and Tacitus tells us that the bird was said to have appeared first under Sesostris, then under Amasis, again under Ptolemy III., and once more in 34 A.D., after an interval so short that the genuineness of the last phoenix was suspected. The phoenix that was shown at Rome in the year of the secular games, A.u.c. 800, was universally admitted to be an imposture. 1 The form and variations of these stories characterize them as popular tales rather than official theology ; but they evidently must have had points of attachment in the mystic religion of Egypt, and indeed both Horapollo and Tacitus speak of the phoenix as a symbol of the sun. Now we know from the Book of the Dead and other Egyptian texts that a bird called the "bennu" was one cf the sacred symbols of the worship of Heliopolis, and Wiedemann (Zts<:h. f. Aeg. Sprac/te, xvi. p. 89 sq.) has made it toler ably clear that the bennu was a symbol of the rising sun, whence it is represented as "self-generating" and called "the soul of Ra (the sun)," "the heart of the renewed Sun." All the mystic symbolism of the morning sun, especially in connexion with the doctrine of the future life, could thus be transferred to the bennu, and the lan guage of the hymns in which the Egyptians praised the luminary of dawn as he drew near from Arabia, delighting the gods with his fragrance and rising from the sinking flames of the morning glow, was enough to suggest most of the traits materialized in the classical pictures of the Phoenix. That the bennu is the prototype of the phoenix is further confirmed by the fact that the former word in Egyptian means also "palm-tree," just as the latter does in Greek. How far the Egyptian priests translated the symbolism of the bennu into a legend it would be vain to conjecture ; that the common people did so is only what we should expect ; and it is to be observed that the monu ments have not yet shown any trace of the element in the classical legend which makes the phoenix a prodigy instead of a symbol its actual appearance at long intervals. The very various periods named make it probable that the periodical return of the phoenix belongs only to vulgar legend, materializing what the priests knew to be symbolic. The hieroglyphic figure of the bennu is that of a heron ( _Zr bennu, or XT l>dh), and the gorgeous colours and plumed head spoken of by Pliny and others would be least inappropriate to the purple heron (Ardea pur pur ea], 1 Some other ancient accounts may be here referred to. That ascribed to Hecatseus is, in the judgment of Cobet (Mnemosyne, 1883), stolen from Herodotus by a late forger. The poem of the Jew Ezechiel quoted by Eusebius (Prsp.p. Ev., ix. 29. 30) appears to refer to the phoenix. Here the sweet song is first mentioned, a song which, according to the poem on the phoenix ascribed to Lactantius, accom panies the rising sun. The bird is often spoken of in Latin poetry, and is the subject of an idyl by Claudian. See also Solinus, cap. xxxiii., with Salmasius s Exercitationes ; Tertullian, De resur. carnis, c. 33 ; Clemens Rom., Ep. i. ch. xxv. with which, or with the allied Ardea cinerea, it has been identified by Lepsius and Peters (Aelteste Texte des Todten- buchs, 1867, p. 51). But it must be remembered that the bennu in the Egyptian texts is really a mere symbol, hav ing the very vaguest connexion with any real bird, and the golden and purple hues described by Herodotus may be the colours of sunrise rather than the actual hues of the purple heron. How Herodotus came to think that the bird was like an eagle is quite unexplained ; perhaps this is merely a slip of memory. Many commentators still understand the word 7fl, chol, in Job xxix. 18 (A. V. "sand ") of the phoenix. This interpretation is per haps as old as the (original) Septuagint, and is current with the later Jews, whose appetite for fable, however, is often greater than their exegetical sagacity. Compare Eisenmenger s Entdecktes Juden- thum, vol. i. passim. Among the Arabs the story of the phoenix was confused with that of the salamander ; and the samand or samandal (Damiri, ii. 36 sq. ) is represented sometimes as a quad ruped, sometimes as a bird. It was firmly believed in, for the incombustible cloths woven of flexible asbestos were popularly thought to be made of its hair or plumage, and were themselves called by the same name (comp. Yakut, i. 529, and Dozy, s.v. ). The anka (Pers. simurgh), a stupendous bird like the roc (rukh) of Marco Polo and the Arabian Nights, also borrows sonic features of the phoenix. According to Kazwmi (i. 420) it lives 1700 years, and when a young bird is hatched the parent of opposite sex burns itself alive. In the book of Kalilah and Dimnali the simur or anka is the king of birds, the Indian ganida on whom Vishnu rides. PHCENIXVILLE, a borough in the United States, in Schuylkill township, Chester county, Pennsylvania, is situated 27^ miles north-west of Philadelphia by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, on the right bank of the Schuylkill river, which is there joined by French Creek, crossed by eight fine bridges. Phoenixville is best known as the seat of the blast-furnaces and mills of the Phoenix Iron Company, which had its origin in a rolling and slitting mill erected in 1790 by Benjamin Longstreth, and long ranked as the largest in the States. The works cover 1 50 acres and employ sometimes 2500 men. Phoenixville also contains a pottery, a sash and planing mill, a shirt-factory, and needle works ; and iron, copper, and lead are all mined in the neighbourhood. The vicinity of the borough is noted for its large number of magnificent iron bridges. The population was 2670 in 1850, 4886 in 1860, 5292 in 1870, and 6682 in 1880. PHONETICS (TO. (j)wvi]TiKd, the matters pertaining to the voice, </>wv?;) is the science and art of the production of sounds, including cries, by means of the organs of speech in man and their analogues in other animals. This very extensive subject may be divided into the following three parts. (1) Anatomical, the accurate descrip tion of all the organs employed, emissive (lungs, with the muscles acting on them, trachea, larynx, pharynx, mouth and its parts, nose and its passages, with its closing valve the uvula) and receptive (the ear, external and internal, and parts of the brain with which the auditory nerve com municates). As all voice-sounds are produced by imita tion, defects in the receptive organs entail defects in the action of the emissive. The congenitally deaf are conse quently mute. (2) Physiological, the co-ordinated action of the parts just referred to in hearing and uttering sounds, and especially expiration and inspiration, with laryngeal, oral, and nasal actions, and the relation of these actions to the will (on these see VOICE). (3) Acoustical, with especial reference to the action of double membranous reeds, as in the glottis ; the effects of resonance chambers, both fixed and variable in shape and size, open and closed, single and combined, and of the passage of air, more or less in a state of sonorous vibration, through tubes of variable lengths and widths, with walls of variable hardness, and with or without the interposition of semi -viscous fluids, as well as of flapping, smacking, or vibrating parts, and of other obstructions ; also investigations into the nature, pro-