Book I: The American Egypt · Chapter 2
A meme goes around comparing the Nile and the Mississippi: Memphis on both rivers, Cairo, Thebes, Luxor and Luxora, Alexandria. The towns are real. But the meme gets the order wrong in a way that helps us.
The name came before the towns
The Illinois State Museum says the region was called “Egypt” before its Egyptian-named towns existed. Cairo became a town in 1837, though it was planned in 1818; Thebes in 1844; Karnak around 1893. The museum says “Egypt” was in everyday speech by the early 1830s, and the first printed use it found is in 1843. (Record)
Their explanation
The official story is a corn famine in 1830–31: central Illinois farmers went south to buy grain, the way the Bible’s Israelites went “down to Egypt.” The museum itself says the Nile-delta resemblance “cannot be documented.” (Record)
Under the Evidence Code, an institution explaining its own name is a hostile witness. We test the explanation, but we keep the admission: the name was there first.
What the meme gets wrong
- “Theros” is really Thebes, Illinois.
- Alexandria, Louisiana is in the middle of the state, not at the delta. New Orleans is the city at the delta.
- Egypt’s Memphis sat near the top of the Nile delta, not “south of the middle.”
Getting these right is what makes the rest unbreakable.
The lens: the name came first and the paper came later. (Pattern)
Still open: who first called this land Egypt, and why. That needs early travel accounts and newspapers from before 1830.
Sources: Illinois State Museum: How Egypt Got Its Name · Thebes, Illinois