phoenix, mythological bird
Fishburn and Hughes: "A mythical bird of red and gold plumage worshipped in ancient Egypt, a symbol of immortality associated with the cult of the sun. The phoenix lived for 500 years and then burned its own nest; a new phoenix emerged from the flames and took the ashes of its dead father to Heliopolis (Herodotus 2.73). The burning phoenix became a Christian allegory of the resurrection of the body and the eternal life of the soul. The phoenix also appears in the mythologies of Islam and in the sacred books of China. In Imaginary Beings Borges devotes two entries to this fantastic bird (p.45, on the Chinese Phoenix, and p. 117). In the second he quotes from Herodotus' account and from Tacitus, who speculates on 'the intervals of the phoenix's visits' (Annals 6.28). He also refers to a myth recalled by Pliny (10.2) according to which the phoenix lives a whole Platonic year, after which the history of the world repeats itself. From this, Borges adds, it was concluded in antiquity that the phoenix is 'a mirror or an image of this process'." (152-53)