Read the caveat
Herodotus says he knows the bird only from pictures. That sentence defines the limits of the evidence he records.
Origins
Before the ashes:
a bird in the record
The phoenix reaches us through writers who quoted reports, questioned chronologies and admitted what they had never seen.
Editorial position
The origin story is not one clean line from Egypt to Greece to the present. It is a layered archive of encounters, translations and later reinterpretations.
Field notes
What to notice
Keep the names
Bennu and phoenix can be compared through Heliopolis and solar imagery without being collapsed into one figure.
Track the later layer
The familiar ashes narrative becomes visually dominant in medieval European bestiaries and Christian interpretation.
Research shelf