This phrase alludes to the Dead Sea fruit, a legendary fruit which looked appetizing but turned to smoke and ashes when someone tried to eat it. The fruit are described in the Travels attributed to the 14th-century writer John de Mandeville .

Often found in the fuller form turn to dust and ashes in your mouth , the phrase is used in the Bible as a metaphor for worthlessness, for example in Genesis 18:27 and the Book of Job 30:19. It derives from the legend of the Sodom apple, or Dead Sea fruit, whose attractive appearance tempted people, but which tasted only of dust and ashes when eaten.

In classical mythology, the phoenix was a unique bird resembling an eagle that lived for five or six centuries in the Arabian desert. After this time it burned itself on a funeral pyre ignited by the sun and fanned by its own wings and was then born again from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle of life. The simile like a phoenix from the ashes is used of someone or something that has made a fresh start after apparently experiencing total destruction.

In the Bible, the wearing of sackcloth and the sprinkling ashes on your head were signs of penitence or mourning.