Excerpt from Original Papers Read Before the Syro-Egyptian Society of London, Vol. 1
The word year, which is common in hieroglyphical inscriptions as part of a date, is spelt BAIT, by means of a Palm branch which is the syllable BAI, and the letter T. Bait is also the name of a bird; and hence we get at the reason why the Bird, the Palm branch, and the Year, are united in Egyptian fable. The Bird and the Palm branch are thus used as symbols of the word Year which could not otherwise be sculptured for the eye.
In Greek the Palm, the tree of Ph?nicia, was called a Ph?nix, and hence the Greeks called the fabulous Egyptian bird by the same name.
This fabulous Ph?nix was, however, chiefly spoken of as the symbol of a longer period of time, at the end of which it returned to earth to die, and its offspring at once grew out of its mothers ashes. The Romans readily borrowed this, as other Egyptian fables, and Tacitus tells us that the Ph?nix, whose period of return was very variously stated, came to Egypt in the consulship of P. Fabius and L. Vitellius. This was A.D. 34, a year in which we in vain look for anything peculiar to justify the event.
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