Career
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 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.
Antoin East. Murphy writes in The Genesis of Macroeconomics (2008):..Furthermore, given Terrasson and Turgot"s clerical connections—they were both abbés at this time..—..Turgot was in no doubt about attributing them to Terrasson. Paul Harsin did not accept this.
"There is no doubt.. with respect to Law"s paternity of ". The abbé Terrasson has also been credited with being the author of..Mémoire pour servir à justifier la Campagnie des Indes contre la censure de casuistes qui la condamnent (1720), which is also about Law"s system.
..I agree with Harsin that Law either wrote or directed the writing of the letters.
..he may have used Terrasson as an intermediary for pushing his own ideas into the public arena.