Record: the document says itLens: our readingOpen: not yet provenDisputed: argued, often by a hostile witness
Year: 1050 · Places: Tennessee, Gulf Coast, South America, Europe, Africa
SUMMARYEgypt in America: the pyramids came first (Nov 3, 2026)
RECORDon July 25, 1813, H. M. Brackenridge wrote to Thomas Jefferson that a Cahokia mound "falls little short of the Egyptian pyramid Mycerius," matches "the exact Size of the pyramid of Asychis," and that "the mound of Cohokia is as ancient as those of Egypt" (Founders Online). That is 5 years before Cairo IL was planned and 6 before Memphis TN
RECORDKincaid Mounds, a Mississippian mound city of about 1050–1400, sits in Massac County, in the heart of Little Egypt; Cahokia's Monks Mound is the largest earthen pyramid in North America
RECORDGoodspeed's History (1887) says Overton and Winchester "laid out a town which they thus named" in 1819 and gives NO reason for the name "Memphis"; the founders' own history is silent (needs deep research: Overton papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives)
RECORDthe Grand Canyon has Isis Temple and Horus Temple, named by late-1800s mapmakers
DISPUTEDthe Arizona Gazette (Apr 5, 1909) "Kincaid" story of an Egyptian-style citadel with hieroglyphs and mummies; the Smithsonian says it has no record of Kincaid or of Prof. Jordan
RECORDthe 1800s "Mound Builder" myth credited the mounds to a lost race (Israelites, Egyptians, Welsh) to deny that the people living there built them; the Smithsonian's Cyrus Thomas concluded in 1894 that the ancestors of Native peoples built them
LENSthe first Americans to write about Little Egypt's pyramids called them Egyptian and as old as Egypt; the land had pyramids before it had Egyptian names; the builders were the aboriginals, and the story was split so the pyramids would belong to "a lost race" instead of the people (Pattern)
OPENwhether any Egyptian names were used before Brackenridge needs deep research (maps of 1790–1813, French Illinois Country records from Kaskaskia and Cahokia).