Languages, medicine and learned societies
Weisse was born in Lorraine in 1810 and studied classics and natural science at Bitsche, then chemistry and philosophy at Metz. He taught French in Vienna before emigrating to the United States in 1840. During his years in Boston he published a Key to the French Language. He later returned to Europe, taking a medical degree in Brussels in 1850.
He settled in New York, practised medicine and eventually devoted more time to writing and lectures. As president of the New York Philological Society, he pursued the history and future of languages; his longer study concerned the development of English. He also took part in the early Theosophical Society. Weisse died in New York in 1888, leaving a body of work that moved between professional medicine, philology and speculative accounts of ancient traditions.
An Egyptian monument and an argument about origins
The Obelisk and Freemasonry appeared in 1880, as the removal of Cleopatra’s Needle from Alexandria drew public attention. Weisse assembled reports, measurements and illustrations concerning the monument, including an account by the Egyptian Mason S. A. Zola. He interpreted objects and arrangements around its base as evidence for the antiquity of Masonic symbolism. Those connections are the argument of his book.
The title also promises comparisons with symbols found in American mounds. Plates, diagrams and hieroglyphs give visual form to the proposed links. Weisse explicitly credits Samuel Birch with English translations of inscriptions, while drawing on the discoveries associated with Belzoni and Commander Gorringe. Distinguishing those contributions helps explain how he built his account from archaeological reporting, translation and his own interpretation.
