a French priest, author and member of the Académie française. Jean Terrasson, born in Lyon, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1707. His 1715 Dissertation on Homer's Iliad took the side of the 'moderns' in the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. In 1721 he became Professor of Greek at the College de France. 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 with ancient Egyptian ritual, and served as an inspiration for Mozart and Schikaneder's Magic Flute.
