Jean Terrasson - Sethos - 1731

TERRASSON, ABBÉ JEAN. — SETHOS, HISTORY OR LIFE DRAWN FROM ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS: ANECDOTES OF ANCIENT EGYPT (PARIS, GUERIN, 1731, 3 VOLUMES. ORIGINAL EDITION WITH MAPS).
Paris: Jacques Guerin, 1731.
3 volumes in-12. Full contemporary calf leather, spine with raised bands ornamented.

Precious and rare original complete edition in three volumes of the most famous Egyptian initiation novel of the Enlightenment century.

Abbé Terrasson, a member of the French Academy and the Collège de France, deploys here prodigious erudition on the geography, manners, religion and secret rites of Pharaonic Egypt. Sethos’s journey, facing trials of fire, water, and air in the pyramidal undergrounds to access the sacred mysteries of Isis, profoundly marked literature, the symbolism of eighteenth‑century Freemasonry, and the operatic arts.

The work is indeed complete with its two magnificent fold-out maps, carefully engraved, tracing the routes of the Red Sea, the Nile, and the African continent.

A very beautiful copy in period calf leather binding with uniform raised bands and gold tooling in the spines’ compartments. Light wear and losses to the headpieces and corners, bindings very solid. Joints cracked. Interior particularly clean on vellum paper with two‑color impressions in red and black on the title page of volume one. Fold-out maps in perfect condition, without tears.

Without Abbé Terrasson and his Sethos published in 1731, Schikaneder and Mozart would probably never have conceived the character of the great priest Sarastro nor the initiatory ordeals of Tamino in The Magic Flute (1791)!

The red and black ink dedication on the title and the presence of the two fold-out maps of Africa and the Red Sea (Sinus Arabicus) make this 1731 original edition a top‑tier item. Presented in a superb, homogeneous three‑volume set in 18th‑century full calf, this title is an absolute treasure for any cabinet devoted to Egyptian myths, initiation novels, and the great texts of the Enlightenment.