Southern Illinois University - Obelisk Yearbook (Carbondale, IL)

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Photo by John T. Merkle Southern Portraits photo by Jeff McGuire 2300.2 t2. 3 Bonn

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OF Ll TTLe eGVPT One stubents quest for the truth. Story by Andy Wagoner THG 1.0116 Dear Uncle Wilbur and .Aunt Vera, I hope this letter finds both of you well and doing fine. Here I am starting my tenth semester, pretty well getting back into the swing of school. Things will be hunky-dory as soon as I find a place to stay and dont have to sleep in the Vega anymore. In your last letter you wondered why this place is so gung-ho on using Egyptian names. To be honest, I never gave it much thought before you asked, but I,ve done some checking and found out some pretty interesting things. First, thereis the business of the name Egypt itself. That's what they call the part of Illinois south of a line from St. Louis to Vincennes, Ind. So why do they call it that? I found three reasons, but I'm not sure any of them are right. Some people think the land where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi River-near what is now Cairo-and both riversi tendency to flood reminded early Southern Illinoisians of Egypt along the Nile, and the name was adopted. Other people believe that a small settlement started around 1800 caused the name. The settlement was where Edwardsville is now and was called Goshen-same name as the place the Isrealites stayed when they were in Egypt. Seems to me this theory runs into the chicken and egg problem-which came first, Southern Illinois being known as Egypt or a town having an Egyptian name. Then there,s the third explanation. Sometime between 1824 and 1842-nobody knows for sure-a bad winter and an early killing frost the next fall left central Illinois short of corn. tToo bad you couldnt have been there with some of your jokes Uncle Wilbur. Ha-ha! J ust kiddingJ Well, supposedly people from there went to Southern Illinois, where the weather had been milder and the crops weren,t hurt, to buy com. This situation reminded people of that story in the Bible. You know it Aunt Vera: ST. CLAIR RANDOLPH : ttWhen J acob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, tWhy do you look at one another? And he said, 1Behold, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt: go down and buy grain for us there, so that we may live and not die? So ten of J osephis brothers went down to buy grain in Egyp . Thatis from the first three verses of the 42nd chapter of Genesis. I looked it up. I guess it just seemed natural to call Southern Illinois Egypt after that. Something else I found out. The southernmost 11 counties-that includes J ackson County, where Carbond : is-,are sometimes called Little Egypt. That name wasnit too popular for a while though. There was an exotic Syrian dancer at the 1904yWorldis Fair who went by the same name, and people thought that gave the area a bad reputation. tMaybe you sawLittle Egypt dance sometime, Uncle Wilbur. Ha-ha! J ust kidding. Dont get mad Aunt Vera.t Anyway, with the area being called Egypt or Little Egypt, it,s.natural to give things Egyptian names. For instance, there's the school newspaper-the Daily Egyptian. And then there,s that Saluki business. Saluki. Thatis the school mascot. It became the mascot in 1951 because nobody thought the Maroons-the previous name for Southemis sports teams-was colorful enough. tGet it, Uncle Wilbur? Maroons, not colorful enouth Anyway, a Saluki is a dog. a guess the school went to the dogs in '51. Ha-ha! J ust kiddingJ It is one of the oldest known breeds of domesticated dogs and was the royal dog of the ancient Egyptians.