La fenice del mondo mediterraneo e il fenghuang. Una riconsiderazione in chiave comparatistica

The mythical bird known in an￾cient China as feng 鳳 or fenghuang 鳳凰
is a ubiquitous symbolic animal in Chinese culture. Its association with the phoenix of the
Greco–Roman world recurs frequently in comparative studies on religious symbolism, usually without giving rise to particular insights. The contribution includes in the first part
a brief review of the main sources on the phoenix in classical Greece, as well as an exposition of the symbolism of the benu bird in dynastic Egypt, a sacred animal considered to be one of the original sources of Herodotus’ description of the phoenix. In the second part, the focus was placed on Chinese texts (pre–imperial and early imperial sources), in order to show how the functional symbolic elements in common between the phoenix of the Greek and Medi￾terranean worlds and the Chinese feng/feng￾huang are more numerous and punctual than previously stressed.