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| Benu in hieroglyphics | |||||||
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| Gr.-Roman. time |
Benu Bnw The newborn son / The Born-Again |
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| Greek | Phoenix | ||||||
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Benu was the name of an ancient Egyptian god of the dead . In Egyptian mythology it was later revered as a divine bird, as it was reborn as a purple heron and migratory bird when it returned from its wintering area to Egypt . In Egyptian astronomy, Benu embodied the planet Venus , which was also represented with a halo . He was considered the patron god of the holy Aries .
background
In the Middle Kingdom , the Egyptians saw a falcon in Benu at sunset , which after its nightly stay in the Duat is reborn as a heron during the dawn . In addition, the Benu was regarded as the Ba-soul of Osiris , who stayed in hiding in the Imiut des Anubis until the rebirth. Ba-djedet was also considered to be Ba des Osiris .
Myth of the Benu
The myth of Benu tells that after creation he was the first being to settle on the land that emerged from the flood. At certain intervals he comes from Arabia or India to Heliopolis, where he builds a nest of myrrh in the temple of the sun god . Here it burns in the glow of the dawn at sunrise, only to rise again rejuvenated from its ashes and fly up to heaven. This should happen every 500 or 1461 years.
Representations
It is usually represented in the form of a human-sized heron with two long feathers on the back of the head and golden-red or four-colored plumage. Possibly this heron is the extinct giant heron Ardea bennuides .
See also
literature
- Kurt Sethe : The name of the phoenix. In: Journal for Egyptian Language and Antiquity . Volume 45, 1908, pp. 84-85 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- Wilhelm Spiegelberg : On the name of the phoenix. In: Journal for Egyptian Language and Antiquity. Volume 46, 1909, p. 142 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- Elmar Edel : About the inscriptions on the seasonal reliefs of the “World Chamber” from the Niuserre solar sanctuary. In: News from the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. 1961, No. 8, ISSN 0065-5287 , pp. 211-255.
- Elmar Edel: About the inscriptions on the seasonal reliefs of the “World Chamber” from the Niuserre solar sanctuary. Part 2. In: News from the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. 1963, No. 4, ISSN 0065-5287 , pp. 92-142.
- Elmar Edel: About the inscriptions on the seasonal reliefs of the “World Chamber” from the Niuserre solar sanctuary. Part 2, continued. In: News from the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. 1963, No. 5, ISSN 0065-5287 , pp. 143-217.
- Richard H. Wilkinson : The world of the gods in ancient Egypt: Faith, power, mythology. Theiss, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-8062-1819-6 , p. 212.
Web links
- Friedhelm Hoffmann : Phoenix. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.