They say that every dog has its day, and for Apollo, a young stray who roams the Giza necropolis in Greater Cairo, that day was Oct. 14. Just after sunrise, a paraglider pilot named Alex Lang spied the dog frolicking atop the Pyramid of Khafre, a 448-foot tall limestone monument in the famous Giza complex that people are not permitted to scale.
“I looked down and saw something move,” said Mr. Lang, an accountant from Atlanta. He was taking part in an adventure sport called paramotoring, which allows you to strap on a backpack attached to a small engine and wing and turn yourself into a human aircraft.
“He just stood there confidently, like he was king or maybe pharaoh of the hill,” Mr. Lang said.
Mr. Lang filmed a short video that quickly became an overnight sensation, amassing 28 million views on Instagram and trending on several other online platforms. The footage prompted social media commenters to ponder whether the creature with the large erect ears was Anubis, an ancient Egyptian god of the dead often depicted as a man with a jackal’s head.
“Wrong god,” said Vicki Michelle Brown, co-founder of the American Cairo Animal Rescue Foundation. “The workers at the Giza pyramid complex had already named him Apollo.”
Ms. Brown and her business partner, Ibrahim Elbendary, live in an apartment building across the street from the 4,600-year-old pyramid.
While online shortly after Mr. Lang’s video was posted, Mr. Elbendary recognized Apollo by his coloring and the curl of his tail. For the past three years, the animal welfare operation had provided food, water and medical care for the dog, his eight siblings and their pack mother.
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