Memphis, Tennessee — born and raised. The city’s name and symbols deliberately echo ancient Egypt: just as the Nile’s cradle held Memphis, so did the Mississippi witness a new city taking a storied name and a layered identity. That connection is more than nominal; it’s visible in the iconography and the storytelling that make Memphis distinct.

The pyramids of Memphis, Tennessee, draw direct visual inspiration from the great pyramids of Giza. In Memphis, the pyramid form became a civic emblem, scaled and reimagined to fit modern purpose. Over time, that shape has been dressed with local meaning: the Afro pick motif sometimes used in art and design overlays the pyramid silhouette, transforming a monumental geometry into an assertion of Black culture and history. The pointed teeth of the pick—likened to sharpened flint and to oyster shells historically used as cutting implements—evoke a lineage of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and aesthetic practice in hair care and grooming. Those tools, improvised from what was available, connect daily life to craftsmanship and identity, and the Afro pick as symbol ties personal grooming to collective memory.

This blending — ancient forms reinterpreted through African-American material culture — creates a layered narrative. The pyramid’s permanence meets the pick’s intimacy: a public monument meets a domestic tool. Together they tell a story of adaptation, of cultural continuity and reinvention. In Memphis, Tennessee, the past is both an architectural reference and a living archive, where symbols borrow from distant antiquity and local practice to express community, resilience, and creative pride.