Lecture by Margaret Geoga on "The Legacy of Jean Terrasson's Séthos" for ARCE Chicago

Ancient, Moderns, and Freemasons: The Legacy of Jean Terrasson's Séthos

Margaret Geoga
PhD Candidate, Brown University

American Research Center in Egypt Chicago Chapter
Saturday
September 1, 2018
5:00 pm
LaSalle Banks Room
Oriental Institute, Lower Level

Jean Terrasson’s 1731 novel, Séthos, Histoire ou Vie tirée des Monumens anecdotes de l’ancienne Egypte, follows an ancient Egyptian prince through his education, initiation into a secret society of priests of Isis, adventures throughout Africa, and eventual return to Egypt. Best known as one of Mozart’s sources for The Magic Flute, the novel has otherwise been largely forgotten by literary critics and Egyptologists alike. An in-depth examination of the once-influential novel, however, reveals Séthos to be a valuable source regarding the development of Egyptology, the discipline’s place within broader intellectual debates in 18th-century Europe, and the ways in which Ancient Egypt was imagined in the 18th and early 19th centuries. This lecture will examine the intellectual context in which the novel was written and Terrasson’s vision of ancient Egypt and the various sources he used to inform it. Finally, the lecture will focus on the afterlives of Séthos, its influence on other literary works, and its appropriation by Freemasonry. The far-reaching impact of Terrasson’s novel and its role in the development of Egyptology suggest that Séthos deserves more attention from both Egyptologists and literary historians.

Margaret Geoga is a PhD candidate in Egyptology at Brown University, where she is currently preparing a dissertation about the transmission and reception of “The Teaching of Amenemhat” and other literary texts in the Eighteenth Dynasty. Her Masters’ thesis focused on the reception of ancient Egypt in Enlightenment-era Europe. She has worked at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Field Museum in Chicago, and for Harvard’s Giza Project. Her research interests include ancient Egyptian literature, reception studies, Netherworld Books, funerary religion, and literary theory.