The Bennu, the Sacred Heron of Heliopolis and the Rising Sun
The Egyptian Bennu, a heron linked to Atum, Ra and Osiris: its origins at Heliopolis, the benben stone, the Book of the Dead and its tie to the phoenix.
On the walls of tombs and in Egyptian funerary papyri a large grey heron often appears, with two long feathers hanging from the back of its head. This is the Bennu, one of the oldest sacred birds of Egyptian religion, venerated above all at Heliopolis, the city of the Sun that stood near present-day Cairo. Greek authors knew of it only by hearsay, and from those reports the legend of the phoenix may have been born, at least in part.
A Name Linked to Rising
The Bennu's name is usually connected with the Egyptian verb weben, meaning “to rise” or “to shine”, used especially of the sun. The bird was therefore an image of the star that appears on the horizon every morning, and by extension of the first appearance of light at the beginning of the world. According to many Egyptologists, in the oldest depictions it looked like a wagtail; from the New Kingdom onwards the heron form prevailed, sometimes crowned with the solar disc or the atef crown.
The Bennu was considered the ba, that is a spiritual manifestation, of the god Ra, and at the same time it was close to Atum, the creator who according to the theology of Heliopolis emerged by himself from the primeval waters. The Pyramid Texts, carved in the burial chambers of the kings at the end of the Old Kingdom, recall Atum rising as the benben stone in the dwelling of the Bennu at Heliopolis.
The Benben Stone and the Primeval Mound
The benben stone was a cult object of conical or pyramidal shape, kept in the solar sanctuary of Heliopolis. It represented the mound that emerged from the watery chaos, the first solid point on which light came to rest. According to some interpretations of the myth, the Bennu alighted on that very stone, or on a sacred tree, and with its cry broke the silence of the beginning. Many scholars see the benben as the model for the pyramidions that crowned pyramids and obelisks.
The link with water was deep. The heron lives in marshes and along the banks of the Nile, and its presence could recall the annual flood, which made the fields fertile and was experienced as a periodic return of creation. The Bennu thus joined the cycle of the sun, which disappears in the evening and is reborn at dawn, to the cycle of the river, regular and indispensable to the life of Egypt.
The Bennu in the Book of the Dead
In the funerary texts of the New Kingdom, gathered in what we call the Book of the Dead, the deceased could wish to be transformed into various divine beings. One spell, known to scholars as chapter 83, is devoted precisely to transformation into a Bennu: whoever possesses it hopes to go forth into the light of day like the bird that renews itself. In chapter 17, one of the most important, the deceased declares that he is the great Bennu of Heliopolis, who watches over what exists.
The Bennu was also associated with Osiris, the god who was killed and returned to life, and it was sometimes shown perched on his burial mound or on the tree that sheltered his body. In this way the solar bird also became a symbol of survival after death. Its image appears on many carefully painted papyri and on amulets that were sometimes placed in burials.
When Herodotus visited Egypt in the fifth century BC, he heard at Heliopolis of a bird that returned every five hundred years. That story probably reflected, filtered through interpreters and priests, something of the theology of the Bennu. The Greek phoenix and the Egyptian heron do not coincide entirely, but they share the central idea: the light that vanishes and returns, and life renewing itself according to a sacred rhythm.