Jean Terrasson published the historical novel Life of Sethos, which became highly influential within Freemasonry and Afrocentrism. Sethos belongs in the same genre as Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur. Besides Terrasson, other Catholic freemasons include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Carlo Collodi à la Pinocchio, Simon Bolivar, Napoleon Bonaparte’s four brothers, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Marquis de Lafayette, and Giacomo Casanova.
This freemasonic handbook was the controversial three-volume book Life of Sethos: Taken from Private Memoirs of the Ancient Egyptians by Jean Terrasson (1670-1750), a French priest who was professor of Greek at the College de France. Although now completely forgotten, the novel was widely read in the eighteenth century; English and German versions appeared in 1732, and an Italian version in 1734. Alas, Terrasson did not have access to any Egyptian information about Egypt, since hieroglyphics were not deciphered until the nineteenth century via the Rosetta Stone. Terrasson was dependent on the notion of mystical Egypt preserved in Greek and Latin sources. But he had read widely in that literature, and during the years 1737-44 he published a translation of Diodorus of Sicily, one of the principal sources of the ancient idea that Greek religion and customs derived from Egypt.
Sethos, the hero of this quasi-biography, is supposed to have lived in the thirteenth century BCE, a century before the Trojan War. The story begins at Memphis, where Sethos’s father is king. Thirteenth-century Memphis, as Terrasson imagines it, has many of the features of an idealized French university. The temple of Isis, Osiris, and Horus serves as the theater of arts and sciences. But the whole complex was destroyed by the Persian king Cambyses in 525 BCE. Terrasson also describes a university complex in Thebes. Here was a great library though the books for priests were not available to the public.
Sethos goes to Memphis to study, but while there he is also initiated. The initiation takes place in the recesses of a pyramid–before serious archeological work was done in Egypt in the nineteenth century it was not known that pyramids were used primarily as tombs. An inscription over the entrance explains to the candidate the significance of the ordeal he is about to undergo. The presiding goddess is Isis, and the hero must descend into the world of the dead and return.
But Terrasson has added mythical elements from ancient Greek sources (i.e. Orpheus and Eurydice mythology). The notion that the soul must be purified in fire, water, and air was well known to the Neo-Platonists, but ultimately derives from the fifth-century BCE Greek philosopher Empedocles.
Although most candidates are frightened off by the threatening inscription, Sethos descends into the pyramid. Three wise men warn him that they will block his way if he tries to return. Sethos is led to a place where he must endure the purification of fire, water, and air: he crosses between red-hot iron bars; then he must swim across a canal, and subsequently cross a drawbridge, which hurls him through the air. He emerges from behind a triple statue of Osiris, Isis, and Horus; then he is given canal water to make him forget what he has seen, and a special barley mixture to drink. These elements of the rite also come from Greek sources. In the myth of Er in Plato’s Republic the souls of the dead must drink the water of Forgetfulness (Lethe) before they can enter new bodies, and the barley mixture called kykeon was given to initiates into the Eleusinian mysteries. The initiation described above, however, was only preliminary. Other physical trials await him during a final period of 12 days, including fasting, silence, and lectures on morality.
In order to become a priest, candidates who completed the preliminary tests successfully underwent a final 12 day initiation. They began by taking an oath at the triple statue of Isis, Osiris, and Horus not to reveal what they had seen.
In addition to these final rites of initiation at Memphis, Terrasson describes other mysteries at Thebes, again educational in nature. There is a college at Thebes specializing in astronomy: its equipment includes an observatory, globes, and three or four hundred priests employed in calculations. Mysteries are an important theme also in the second volume of Sethos, in which Terrasson describes his hero’s travels around the continent of Africa.
Even though the novel is supposed to be about ancient Egypt, its ethics are distinctly Christian. At the end of all his trials, and his extensive travels, having endured everything and achieved everything, Sethos rejects all he has won (including a beautiful prospective bride, who has been initiated in the mysteries) for a quiet and celibate life, to be lived among the priests. It is no accident that the principal gods in this narrative are Osiris, his wife Isis, and their son Horus, because they offer the closest ancient analogy to the Christian Holy Family. For more data about Sethos read Not Out of Africa by Dr. Mary Lefkowitz. THE END
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