Jean Terrasson, born in Lyon, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1707.
[1] His best-known work is probably the fantasy novel Life of Sethos, Taken from Private Memoirs of the Ancient Egyptians (1731).
This fiction elided Masonic and ancient Egyptian ritual, and served as an inspiration for Mozart and Schikaneder's Magic Flute.
Antoin E. Murphy writes in The Genesis of Macroeconomics (2008):[page needed] Given the fortune that Terrasson was making in the Mississippi Company, was it not natural to find him defending its operations in the pamphlets that he wrote.
Paul Harsin did not accept this... 'There is no doubt... with respect to Law's paternity of [the letters]'.