The phoenix

I'm reading the Travels of John Mandeville which was written in 1356 and became a best-seller. He was an English knight from St. Albans and travelled to the Holy Land, Egypt, India and China in the first half of the 14th century and the account he wrote of his adventures became the standard travel guide to the East for several hundred years. It's full of geographical and historical detail as well as local gossip and legend. Take this piece about Heliopolis in Egypt:
"In this city is a temple round like the Temple of Jerusalem. The priest of that temple has a book in which is written the birthdate of a bird that is called the Phoenix; and there is only one in all the world. And this bird lives for five hundred years, and at the end of every five hundredth year it comes to the temple and burns himself all to powder on the altar. And the priest of the temple, who from his book knew the time of the bird's coming, makes the altar ready and lays on it divers spices and sulphur vivum and twigs of the juniper tree, and other things that burn quickly. And then the bird comes and alights on the altar, and fans with his wings until the things mentioned be alight; and there he burns himself to ashes. On the morrow they find in the ashes as it were a worm; on the second day that worm has turned into a perfectly formed bird; and on the third day it flies away from that place to where it normally lives...This bird is often seen soaring about, when the weather is fair and clear; and men say there, when they see the bird soaring in the air, that there will be good, happy years, for it is a bird of Heaven. This bird is no greater than an eagle in body; he has on his head a crest like a peacock, but it is much greater than a peacock's. His neck is yellow, his back indigo; his wings are red and his tail is barred across with green and yellow and red. And in the sunlight he seems marvellously beautiful, for these are the colours that shine most fairly."