c1800 M Volney RUINS 6th Edition with FOLD OUT MAPS

Sixth edition of a celebrated work that includes two fold out maps; one a map of Europe, Africa and Asia, the other entitled A View of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancients to Explain the Mysteries of Persian, Jewish and Christian Religions

The Ruins by M. Volney gives an account of Ancient cultures, the pagan system of beliefs, religious contradictions, mans place in the universe, the source of evils in society, mystical worship, fire worship and much more.

Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney (February 3, 1757 - April 25, 1820) was a French philosopher, historian, orientalist, and politician. He was at first surnamed Boisgirais after his father's estate, but afterwards assumed the name of Volney (which he had created as a contraction of Voltaire and Ferney). He was born at Craon (Mayenne) of a gentry family. Initially interested in Law and Medicine, he went on to study Classical languages, and his Mémoire sur la Chronologie d’Hérodote (on Herodotus) rose to the attention of the Académie des Inscriptions and of the group around Claude Adrien Helvétius. Soon after, Volnay befriended Pierre Jean George Cabanis, the Marquis de Condorcet, the Baron d'Holbach, and Benjamin Franklin. He spent some four years in Ottoman Egypt and Syria, and published his Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie in 1787, and Considérations sur la guerre des Turcs et de la Russie in 1788. He was a member both of the Estates-General and of the National Constituent Assembly after the outbreak of the French Revolution. In 1791 appeared Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires, an essay on the philosophy of history, containing a vision which predicts the final union of all religions by the recognition of the common truth underlying them all. Volney tried to put his politico-economic theories into practice in Corsica, where in 1792 he bought an estate and made an attempt to cultivate colonial produce. Chassebœuf de Volney was thrown into prison during the Jacobin Club triumph, but escaped the guillotine; he was some time professor of history at the newly founded École Normale. He died in Paris and was buried at the Père Lachaise.

CONDITION