Dupuis

Dupuis, CHARLES FRANÇOIS, savant, was born in 1742, and already in 1766 was called to a chair of Rhetoric in Paris, when he was led to explain mythology by means of astronomy. A work on this subject appeared in 1781. He was now appointed professor of Eloquence in the Collège de France, member of the Académie des Inscriptions, and during the Revolution, a member of the Convention, next of the Council of Five Hundred, and afterwards of the legislative body, of which he became president. He died in 1809. His great work, Origine de tous les Cultes, ou Religion Universelle (1795, 10 vols.), was an extension of the memoir of 1781, and no doubt originated the famous commission afterwards appointed by Napoleon to explore Upper Egypt, which Dupuis had pointed out as the general source of southern mythology.