city of the sun, to die and be burned in the temple of that city, or its ashes were brought there by its successor. There was only one phœnix at the same time, and it lived for 500 years. The legends vary as to its longevity, but 500 years is the period usually assigned. When the phœnix knew that its time had come, it made its own funeral pyre out of spiced woods, and the sun provided the fire. Out of the marrow of its bones came a worm, which quickly grew into a new phœnix, who, after burying its parent in Egypt, returned to Arabia.
The Talmud relates some curious legends of the phœnix, which the Jews believed to be immortal. One story is that when Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit she gave some to all the animals in the Garden of Eden, and that the phœnix was the only one which refused, Hence it escaped the curse of death which overtook the rest of the animal creation. Another legend is that when it was in the ark, and when all the other animals were clamouring to be fed, the phœnix was quiet. Noah, observing it, asked if it was not hungry, to which the phœnix replied, "I saw you were busy, so would not trouble you," an answer which so pleased Noah that he blessed it with eternal life. In the book of Job, xxix, 18, recalling his earlier glory, the patriarch says, "Then I said I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand." Many Jewish scholars believe that the word translated sand should be phœnix, and our Revised Version gives "phœnix" as an alternative rendering. It is easy to appreciate how aptly this would express Job's idea. Some of the Hebrew commentators translate the verse in Ps. ciii, 5, "So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle," by substituting phœnix for eagle.
