Summary
The Bennu is the bird of On, Heliopolis, in modern Ayn Shams. The Pyramid Texts describe it as a kind of wagtail; from the Middle Kingdom it is drawn as a heron. It was worshipped at On, with cults at Heracleopolis and Edfu too, and the Egyptians called it "he who is created of himself".
Its story is the story of the first appearance. In the beginning there was only the water of Nun; then the creator rose as a mound and appeared as a bird on the first stone. Utterance 600 of the Pyramid Texts says to the creator: "O Atum-Khepri, when you mounted as a hill, and shone as bnw of the benben in the temple of the 'phoenix' in Heliopolis, and spewed out Shu and spat out Tefnut". The benben was a conical stone kept in the innermost sanctuary of the House of Re at On, in a hall called the House of the Benben; Egyptians held that the rays of the rising sun touched it first. It was an image of the first mound that came out of the water, and from it came the obelisk, and perhaps the pyramid and its capstone. So the Bennu is the creator himself when he first appeared on the first land.
Later the Bennu was joined to Osiris. The Coffin Texts make it the soul of Osiris that "came out of his heart", which is why it is carved on the heart scarabs laid on the chests of the dead. In the Book of the Dead it is one of the forms the dead hope to take, and in the tomb inscription of Paheri at El-Kab the dead man's soul is wished "to assume the form of phoenix, swallow, of falcon or heron, as you wish". In the Late Period its picture was used to write the word for the soul, the ba, and became a sign of life renewing itself after death.
From this bird the Greeks took their phoenix. Herodotus, in the fifth century BCE, says that Egypt has a sacred bird called the phoenix, which he saw only in pictures, because it comes to Egypt only once in five hundred years, as the people of Heliopolis say, when its father dies; its plumage is partly golden and partly red, and in shape and size it is most like an eagle. They say it flies from Arabia to the temple of the Sun carrying its father in myrrh: it moulds an egg of myrrh as heavy as it can carry, hollows it out, puts its father inside, plasters the opening with more myrrh, and brings him to the temple of the Sun in Egypt and buries him there. Herodotus says he does not believe it. This is a later Greek report not found in the Egyptian texts; the Global Egyptian Museum suggests that some of its elements may have an Egyptian background: the bird's death in flames recalls the Bennu's appearance in the light of the rising sun, and its periodic return recalls the Bennu's link with time and renewal.
The idea the Bennu's story turns on is that the first appearance repeats. The bird that alighted on the first land at the first time is the sun that rises on the same stone every morning, and the soul of the dead that hopes to come out into the day. That is why the Egyptians tied the Bennu to time and its turning, and the Greeks made it a bird that returns after centuries.
We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Egyptian writes it Bn.w, with b, n and w. The Global Egyptian Museum connects it with the Egyptian verb wbn, to rise and shine, from which the name of the benben also comes. It is Arabic banā, whose last letter is w or y; Lane notes that ibn, "son", was originally banawun, with its w dropped. In Lane banāhu is to build and set up, bannā al-quṣūr to raise palaces high, and the son is called ibn because he is "the father's building". On this reading the Bennu is both the builder and the son: the bird that appeared on the first built thing on earth, the mound and the raised stone, and the son who carries his father to the temple of the Sun in Herodotus's report.
Linguistic Root
"The builder and the son"
| Form | Meaning | Witness |
|---|---|---|
| Bn.w | The Bennu bird, phoenix | Egyptian dictionary |
| wbn | To rise, shine; to overflow | Egyptian dictionary |
| bnbn | The sacred benben stone; obelisk | Egyptian dictionary |
| bnbn | Verb: (of the Nile) to flow out, to swell | Egyptian dictionary |
| φοῖνιξ / phoinix | The name Herodotus gives it | Herodotus 2.73 |
B is b, n is n, and the w at the end of Bn.w is the weak letter at the end of banā and ibn; Lane says the last radical of ibn is a w that was dropped. In Egyptian itself three senses gather round b and n: the bird, the raised stone, and the Nile's flood in the verb bnbn. In Arabic the root joins building, raising and offspring: bannā al-quṣūr is to raise palaces, banā al-rajula to rear a man, and banā al-ṭaʿāmu laḥmahu, the food made his flesh grow. The sense the two languages share is something rising from the ground and growing, which is what the story of the Bennu and the mound tells.
The Global Egyptian Museum derives the name from wbn, so that b and n belong to the verb of rising and the first w has dropped. That is an Egyptian explanation of the name by sunrise; our reading makes it building, and the two meet in the mound that rises from the water and is built upon.
Other readings in the essay
The project's Egyptian essay puts banā, to bring into being, first, and sees rebirth in it; that is our reading. Then banna, to be strong. In Lane abanna bi-l-makān is to stay in a place and keep to it, and bannana al-shāt to tie up a sheep to fatten it; we find no strength in it. The essay reads the name of the benben from banā repeated, and from b-n-n as summit. The project's other Egyptian essay makes the benben the first land to appear when the flood recedes, the first piece fit for sowing.
Key Mythic Narratives
A bird between Ra and Osiris
The Global Egyptian Museum suggests that the Bennu's link with the great gods, Atum, Ra and Osiris, is what spread its cult through Egypt. At On it is a manifestation of Atum, on the day's journey the bird of sunrise, and in burial the soul of Osiris on the heart scarab. The Egyptians saw a link between the heron and the soul-bird, the ba, until the Bennu's picture became a sign for writing that word. In the Coffin Texts the Bennu is tied to unhindered passage through the underworld.
In the Roman historians
The Global Egyptian Museum notes that Tacitus set the phoenix's return on the Sothic cycle, the cycle of the star Sirius, so the bird's link with the reckoning of time survives in the Roman report.
Symbolic Reading
The project's Egyptian essay reads the benben as the first land to appear when the flood recedes, the first mound fit for farming. In this reading the Bennu is a bird standing on the first mud to emerge from the water. Anyone who sees herons on the Nile banks and in the fields after the water falls sees something close to this picture: a long-legged bird standing where the ground is uncovered. This is an interpretation of the image that agrees with the essay; what the text establishes is that the Bennu appeared on the benben at On.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
The Bennu's appearance on the first mound in the water of Nun is one of the scenes of the primordial waters: land rises from the water, and creation begins on it. Its link with the soul of Osiris, and the hope of the dead to come out in its form, set it near the stories of death and return, though in the Egyptian texts the Bennu does not die; it appears every morning.
Arabic calls the bird of the Greek legend al-ʿanqāʾ, and the project's Sumerian essay compares the bird Anzu with the ʿanqāʾ and the roc; but Anzu steals the tablet of destinies from Enlil, while the Bennu steals nothing; it appears on the stone at the beginning of time.