The Phoenix
The bird, the myth, the legend
Here’s how Marshall Trimble, the state’s official historian, describes the man who gave Phoenix its name:
Arizona’s capital city might have been called “Salina,” “Stonewall,” or even “Pumpkinville,” had it not been for a spurious English “Lord” named Darrell Duppa. Duppa was a well-educated world traveler who, it was rumored, was given a substantial allowance by his wealthy English relatives to remain permanently at large.
His raucous lifestyle, highlighted by epic bouts with dipsomania was, no doubt, a source of embarrassment to his relatives and contributed to his banishment to Arizona. It was said “Lord” Duppa was fluent in seven languages. Unfortunately for his listeners, the erudite eccentric spoke all seven in the same paragraph.
Phillip Darrell Duppa was originally from France. The Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography speculates that Duppa enlisted in the British army as a young man but fled to North America after killing a fellow officer in a duel. Another source says he emigrated as a teenager.
Marshall Trimble again, describing how, in 1870, a rag tag group of farmers and investors decided on a name for the Valley:
It was time for the silver-tongued Lord Duppa to speak. Drawing upon his knowledge of the classics he waxed eloquently on the pre-Columbian peoples who had dwelt in the rich, fertile valley for some 1,500 years before mysteriously vanishing. He prophesied that another great civilization would spring phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, much like the mythical Egyptian bird that lives a thousand years then flies into a funeral pyre only to emerge again, flourish and live for another millennial.
The folks loved the analogy, even if they didn’t understand what he said and the name stuck.
The Phoenix is a mythological bird, but it originates, perhaps, with the story of a real bird.
The Bennu — a large, Heron-like bird — was common in Egyptian symbolism. Some scholars believe it was a real bird that went extinct in the region sometime before 2000 BCE. The Bennu was sacred to the Egyptians because of its connection to the sun god Ra. The Bennu was said to be present at the birth of creation and was depicted with solar imagery.
The first written account of the Phoenix comes from the Histories of the ancient Greek writer Herodotus. It’s likely that Herodotus, in describing the Phoenix bird, was relaying the story of the Egyptian Bennu to his Greek audience. This would explain how solar imagery became connected with the Phoenix. Herodotus himself doesn’t describe fire or ash in telling the story, but he does explain that the Phoenix enacts the dying-birthing ritual at the Temple of the Helios, which is the temple of the Egyptian sun god Ra.
As the Sun is continually dying (at night) and being reborn (in the morning), so does the Phoenix cycle through life and death.
The Phoenix has a lifespan of around 500 years. There is only one Phoenix in existence at a time. In dying, a new Phoenix is born, to live for 500 years like the predecessor.
Herodotus wrote Histories in 430 BCE. The name he gives to the Phoenix bird possibly derives from the mysterious Phoenician merchants who lived in the centuries preceding Herodotus. The Phoenicians were best known for selling purple-dyed cloth; Phoenicia became the Greek term for the land of the purple color. This reddish-purple dye was an expensive luxury. In Histories, Herodotus describes the plumage of the Phoenix bird as being “partly gold and partly red.”
Lord Duppa may have been familiar with Herodotus’s writings on the Phoenix or Roman versions of the same story. He may have also read Medieval Christian bestiaries.
What is a bestiary?
From the Aberdeen Bestiary webpage:
A bestiary is a collection of short descriptions about all sorts of animals, real and imaginary, birds and even rocks, accompanied by a moralising explanation…
The bestiary appeared in its present form in England in the twelfth century, as a compilation of many earlier sources…
A great deal of its charm comes from the humour and imagination of the illustrations, painted partly for pleasure but justified as a didactic tool 'to improve the minds of ordinary people, in such a way that the soul will at least perceive physically things which it has difficulty grasping mentally: that what they have difficulty comprehending with their ears, they will perceive with their eyes'
The Aberdeen Bestiary Phoenix story begins with a repackaged version of Herodotus’s story, except adding flames and fire to the death ritual:
…it erects a funeral pyre for itself from small branches of aromatic plants, and having turned to face the rays of the sun, beating its wings, it deliberately fans the flames for itself and is consumed in the fire.
Sandwiched in between Christianized moral lessons, the bestiary repeats again the story of the Phoenix, this time adding new imagery, as well as making an explicit connection to the resurrection:
The phoenix also is said to live in places in Arabia and to reach the great age of five hundred years. When it observes that the end of its life is at hand, it makes a container for itself out of frankincense and myrrh and other aromatic substances; when its time is come, it enters the covering and dies. From the fluid of its flesh a worm arises and gradually grows to maturity; when the appropriate time has come, it acquires wings to fly, and regains its Previous appearance and form. Let this bird teach us, therefore, by its own example to believe in the resurrection of the body; lacking both an example to follow and any sense of reason, it reinvests itself with the very signs of resurrection, showing without doubt that birds exist as an example to man, not man as an example to the birds. Let it be, therefore, an example to us that as the maker and creator of birds does not suffer his saints to perish forever, he wishes the bird, rising again, to be restored with its own seed.
See the entire Aberdeen Bestiary manuscript here. The Phoenix story starts at Folio 55.
Lord Duppa - a scandalous, yet true inspiration of a man.