Sethos a pharaoh

Pharaoh

Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...

 from Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

, Histories (Herodotus)

Histories (Herodotus)

The Histories of Herodotus is considered one of the seminal works of history in Western literature. Written from the 450s to the 420s BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that...

 (Book II (Euterpe)):

The Terrasson novel

Sethos became the hero of an improbably influential fantasy novel, Life of Sethos, Taken from Private Memoirs of the Ancient Egyptians, published in 1731 by the French Abbe Jean Terrasson

Jean Terrasson

Jean Terrasson , often referred to as the Abbe Terrasson, was a French priest, author, and most notably a member of the Académie française....

.

The book appeared in Paris in 1731 and in an English translation published in London by J. Walthoe in 1732.

According to the noted classicist Mary Lefkowitz

Mary Lefkowitz

Mary R. Lefkowitz is an American classical scholar and Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College. She is best known to non-Classicists for her anti-Afrocentrism book, Not Out of Africa . She is the widow of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones.-Biography:Lefkowitz earned her B.A...

, Sethos:
This eighteenth century work of fiction is a primary source of Afrocentrism

Afrocentrism

Afrocentrism is cultural ideology mostly limited to the United States, dedicated to the history of Black people a response to global racist attitudes about African people and their historical contributions by revisiting this history with an African cultural and ideological center...

 and of the kind of black history found in such popular books as Martin Bernal

Martin Bernal

Martin Gardiner Bernal is a Professor Emeritus of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is a scholar of modern Chinese political history...

's Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization

Black Athena

Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization is a highly controversial three-volume work by Martin Bernal. He discusses Ancient Greece in a new light. Bernal's thesis discusses the perception of ancient Greece in relation to Greece's African and Asiatic neighbors, which he...

, and George James's Stolen Legacy: Greek Philosophy Is Stolen Egyptian Philosophy.

It is also a key source of a popular web of conspiracy theories positing a secret pagan subculture or Freemasons, devotees of Satan, and environmentalists dedicated to the overthrow of Christianity.

Freemasons

Although at one time it was believed that Sethos was a source for Masonic rituals and ideas, it is now understood that Terrasson took the rituals of the Freemasons, already popular in the France of his day, and projected them backward into his imaginary Egyptian mystery cult.

External links

• Tomes I and II of The Life of Sethos (French)
• The Life of Sethos, Volume I in the 1732 English translation
• 1777 German translation of the Volume I of The Life of Sethos
• Sethos, tragédie nouvelle dédiée au grand Corneille, by Alexandre Tanevot, 1740 tragedy inspired by Terrasson's novel