Record: the document says itPattern: documents line upLens: our reading
Year: 1818 · Places: Tennessee, Gulf Coast, Africa
SUMMARYWho named the American Egypt (Nov 3, 2026; answers P178 Open). MEMPHIS,
RECORDthe founding owners were John Overton, James Winchester and Andrew Jackson. Jackson was a Freemason (likely initiated in St. Tammany Lodge #1), Royal Arch, and Grand Master of Tennessee in 1822–23. Overton was a member of St. Tammany Lodge #1, Worshipful Master of Cumberland Lodge #8, and took the Royal Arch degrees on Feb 14, 1823. Winchester: not on the Tennessee Masons list (Open). The land came from the 1818 Chickasaw cession, which Jackson himself negotiated (with Isaac Shelby), and he then held a share of the Memphis tract. Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830
PATTERNthe Masonic Grand Master who co-owned and named the American Memphis is the same man who treatied the land away from the Chickasaw and then signed the removal of the people. ROYAL ARCH,
RECORDthe degree's central legend is the discovery of a buried vault beneath Solomon's Temple during rebuilding, and the recovery of a lost word and record from it. The rite is literally about digging up the hidden record under a temple (ties to P176/P178, "Masons were Indiana Jones"). CAIRO,
RECORDJohn G. Comegys and partners chartered the "City and Bank of Cairo" in 1818. The University of Illinois Press calls it "plausible" that the name comes from the river meeting, like Cairo on the Nile; the Mississippi was called the "American Nile." The town is an 1830s refounding, and the post office was renamed Cairo in 1839. Comegys's lodge ties: Open. PHOENIX,
RECORDDarrell Duppa, a classically educated adventurer fluent in five languages who also named Tempe after a Greek valley, named Phoenix in October 1870 after the "Egyptian" phoenix, for a new civilization rising from the ashes of a people who had lived there for about 1,500 years. Lodge ties: Open
LENSthe men who put Egyptian, Greek and Phoenician names on the land were the classically trained and lodge-trained elite, and at Memphis the namer was the Grand Master who carried out the removal (Pattern).