DUPUIS, CHARLES French author and politician, was born of poor parents at Trye-Chateau, near Gisors. He represented Seine-et-Oise in the Convention, was secretary to the Assembly in An III. and a member of the Council of Five Hundred in An IV. After the 18th Brumaire he was a member of the Legislative Body, eventually becoming its president. In I 781 he had published a memoir on the origin of the signs of the zodiac, which he placed in Upper Egypt, and on the connection with the whole fabric of the mythology of the ancients. His chief work, Origine de toes les cultes (3 vols., 1795), develop ing his theories, aroused a bitter controversy, and was one of the factors which led Napoleon to send a scientific expedition to Upper Egypt. The Origine passed through many editions (modern ed. 1876), and the author himself published an abridged edition in 1798. Dupuis died on Sept. 29, 1809.