Hushed old Egypt speaks

Hushed old Egypt speaks as a monumental head of a pharaoh from the Ptolemaic Period, 332-330 B.C. goes on the auction block in Essex, UK. The stone head speaks of the timelessness of the Old Kingdom with its vast desert sands and deep dark sea.

Napoleon made the region known in 1798 in the painting “Bonaparte Before the Sphinx'' by Jean-Leon Gerome. Conveying the spell that the Old Nile casts, it pictures the mountainous Sphinx, despoiled by time still haughty, dwarfing the French emperor general, reducing him to a speck in the boundless sand.

Similarly, the land's limitlessness and the netherworld's stillness in Egyptian tombs is also an emblem of a kind. Given that our visual world swirls before us so constantly, this long-lived civilization makes for a logical draw.

That may be why so much of Egypt shows up in our culture. The funerary structure – the pyramid - sits on our dollar bill. And the obelisk, the monumental four-sided stone shaft tapering to a pyramidal tip - a cult symbol to the sun god of the Nile people - is our Washington Monument.

It’s not that the U.S. seeks after gloomy symbols of death or old sun deities. Bour land, sometimes shaky, often scary, likely it’s Egypt's quiet timelessness that we're after.

In the fifth century, when Greek historian Herodotus toured the Valley of the Nile and saw the pyramids, he asked “Why.” And because he is considered the “Father of History,” surely he knew why.

Herodotus even wrote at great length in a work called “Histories" about the Old Nile society and culture. Maybe it was his question that prompted him to pen his voluminous tome.

You may remember that Herodotus played a part in the 1996 film “The English Patient” when the dying patient asked his nurse to read to him from his copy of Herodotus’ book.

While the book details the historian's observations on his tour of Egypt, he seemed particularly taken with the people’s belief in the afterlife. It’s no wonder that near-death English patient would want in on that.

Religion is a major theme in Herodotus’ report on the Old Kingdom. He considered the ancient Egyptians the most pious for their faith that their lives never ended, that they go on living in an afterworld.

Maybe America wants in on that, too. How else to explain the funerary structure - the pyramid - on our currency?

Herodotus also noted of another aspect of the Old Kingdom - the roles of men and women and it’s the reverse of how American society works. Egyptian women were in charge of trade and the marketplace while men stayed home occupied with weaving.

And get his. To urinate, women stood and men crouched. History can be a fun read sometimes.

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