First there is a cache;
then there is no cache;
then there is.
(apologies to Donovan)
The Bennu was the sacred bird of Heliopolis. Bennu probably derives from the word weben, meaning "to rise, to shine". The Bennu was associated with the sun and represented the ba or soul of the sun god, Re. In the Late Period, the hieroglyph of the bird was used to represent Re directly.
The Bennu was also associated with the inundation of the Nile and of the creation. Standing alone on isolated rocks of islands of high ground during the floods the heron represented the first life to appear on the primeval mound which rose from the watery chaos at the first creation. This mound was called the ben-ben. It was the Bennu bird's cry at the creation of the world that marked the beginning of time. The bennu thus was the deity of time and its divisions -- hours, day, night, weeks and years.
The Bennu was also considered a manifestation of the resurrected Osiris and the bird was often shown perched in his sacred willow tree.
The Bennu was known as the legendary phoenix to the Greeks. Herodotus, the Greek historian, says of it:
There is another sacred bird, too, whose name is phoenix. I myself have never seen it, only pictures of it; for the bird seldom comes into Egypt: once in five hundred years, as the people of Heliopolis say.
It is said that the phoenix comes when his father dies. If the picture truly shows his size and appearance, his plumage is partly golden and partly red. He is most like an eagle in shape and size.
What they say this bird manages to do is incredible to me. Flying from Arabia to the temple of the sun, they say, he conveys his father encased in myrrh and buries him at the temple of the Sun.
This is how he conveys him: he first molds an egg of myrrh as heavy as he can carry, then tries lifting it, and when he has tried it, he then hollows out the egg and puts his father into it, and plasters over with more myrrh the hollow of the egg into which he has put his father, which is the same in weight with his father lying in it, and he conveys him encased to the temple of the Sun in Egypt. This is what they say this bird does.
One legend says that before the phoenix dies it builds a nest of incense twigs and therein lies down and dies. From its body a small worm emerges that the sun's heat transforms into the new phoenix.
Another story says that the phoenix rose again from the burnt and decomposing remains of his old body and took these to Heliopolis, where he burned them.
Take a little time to look around at the exhibits here, and to enjoy the garden, and to remember those whose lives were lost in 1991. It's a nice place at sunset -- but a popular one too, so a little discretion may be necessary.
It's too bad that the cache that was here went missing; I hope this one will last. It's in a very interesting location, and the name of the cache is significant -- both because there is a cache here again where one went missing, and, more significantly, because this structure commemorates the Oakland Hills Firestorm of 1991.
The cache has an "emergency preparedness/phoenix" theme, and as such, its initial contents are (appropriately enough, in a Decon Kit box):
- 1 Chinese carved topaz phoenix jewel for the FTF
- 2 shirt-pocket first-aid kits hand-built for this cache (which I'll re-stock periodically; two is all the box has room for!)
- Several Family Preparedness info cards
- Not just a P-38 (my usual cache present) but a P-51, because you Just Never Know.
7-28-05, 23:53 (a scant four hours after publishing!) - Congratulations to kusanagi on the FTF!
In further keeping with the Bennu-as-deity-of-time idea, don't miss the nearby sundial!
Visit the North Hills Phoenix Association for more info about this neighborhood and the things its residents are doing in and for it.
(More interesting cross-cultural phoenix lit here)
Several really good links for Family Emergency Preparedness:
And just remember: motogrrl sez, "It's a turrible thing, a turrible thing I tellya, workin in Healthcare Security." 