Meanwhile, through all the years and the changes in Egypt, the impact of its ancient culture lives on. One symbol of Egypt is as common as it is important: the domestic house cat, first tamed by the Egyptians, who worshiped the cat goddess Bastet. Egypt is a part of everyday language; terms such as pharaoh, mummy, pyramid, and paper—none of which is Egyptian in origin, but all of which describe Egyptian concepts—are household words.
Towns throughout America have their Shriners' organizations, clubs that contribute to the community by organizing charity events. The Shriners are associated with the Masons (also called Freemasons), a worldwide organization that claims a link with the masons who helped build the pyramids, though in fact it originated much later. Both the Shriners and, to a greater extent, the Masons make considerable use of images from ancient Egypt.
The towns of America reflect their Egyptian cultural heritage in their names. There is a Cairo, Illinois and a Cairo, Georgia. (Cairo, Egypt was founded in a. d. 642; that makes it a young city by Egyptian standards.) Much older is the name Alexandria, of which there is a famous town in Virginia, along with Alexandrias in four other states. Still older, of course, is the name Memphis. Memphis, Tennessee is the more famous city in the United States, though there is also a Memphis in Texas.
In the nation's capital, one can find a great example of an obelisk, the Washington Monument. Likewise the back of a dollar bill shows a pyramid with the all-seeing eye of God above it. Far from Washington, in a desert near a great river,
The Luxor Las Vegas Hotel and Casino was built in the shape of a pyramid. Photograph by Neal Lauren.
Reuters/Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.
There is a splendid city with its own pyramid. But the river is the Colorado, not the Nile, and the city is Las Vegas, whose Luxor Hotel stands thirty stories tall. Completed in 1993 at a cost of $300 million, it is smaller than the Great Pyramid, but the Sphinx out front is larger than the original. The interior includes an Egyptian theme park complete with a small version of the Nile running through it.
World History
