Hierakonpolis is now Kom El-Ahmar, or Kawm al-Ahmar, which I personally have never heard of.
Think about all the empires that have come before. Egypt and China and Persia and Rome and countless others had, at one point in time, the distinction of being the seat of the greatest power and learning and culture in all the world. How they have fallen! Some of them were little blips on the radar of time--lasting only a few hundred years!
I wonder in what new empire the children of the future will read about the rise and fall of the ancient empire of North America, the United States? At the peak of their brilliance, the inhabitants of Hierakonopolis surely thought their grandeur permanent.