Mouseion
The Mouseion of Alexandria (
The
History
According to
Unlike the modern
It is uncertain how many scholars lived in the Mouseion at any given time, as surviving reports are few and rather brief.[7][10] Nonetheless, it appears that scholars and staff members were salaried by the State and paid no taxes. According to Strabo, they also received free room and board, and free servants.[2]
Based on extant works of scholars associated with the Mouseion, it seems likely that literary criticism and other similar activities took place there.[2][11] In addition to Greek works, some foreign texts were translated from Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Jewish, and other languages.[12][13] Many of the edited versions of the Greek canon that we know today, from Homer and Hesiod forward, exist in editions that were collated and corrected by the scholars assembled in the Mouseion and the Library of Alexandria.[5][11]
Appearance
In the first century AD, the Greek geographer Strabo described the Mouseion as part of a bigger, richly decorated campus of buildings and gardens:[11]
The Mouseion is also part of the Brucheion (palace complex), possessing a peripatos (lobby), an exedra (columned hall), and large oikos (dining hall), in which the common table of the philologoi, men who are members of the Mouseion, is located. This synodos (assembly) has property in common and a priest in charge of the Mouseion, formerly appointed by the kings, but now by Caesar.[14]
According to this description, the Mouseion featured a roofed walkway, an arcade of seats, and a communal dining room where scholars routinely ate and shared ideas.[12] The building may have also hosted private study rooms, residential quarters, and lecture halls, based on similar structures that were built much later in Alexandria.[15][16] However, it is unclear if the premises provided accommodations for anatomical research or astronomical observations.[13][17] In addition to the Library of Alexandria, another smaller library was housed in the nearby Serapeum (Temple of Serapis), which may have been open to people other than Mouseion scholars.[5][10]
Decline
During the reign of
Despite the fact that the Mouseion continued as an institution under Roman rule, it never regained its former glory.[10] Membership of the Mouseion was not limited to prominent scholars under the Roman emperors but included politicians, athletes, and other people rewarded for their support to the state.[22] Emperor Claudius added an additional building in the first century AD,[23][24] and much later the emperor Caracalla temporarily suspended Mouseion membership in 216 AD.[25][24]
Destruction
The last known references to the old Mouseion still functioning occur in the 260s AD.[26] The Brucheion, the complex of palaces and gardens that included the Mouseion, was probably destroyed by fire on the orders of Emperor Aurelian in 272 AD, although it is not known with certainty how much of the original buildings existed at the time.[16] Scattered references in later sources suggest that another comparable institution was established in the 4th century at a different location, but little is known about its organisation and it is unlikely to have had the resources of its predecessor.[26] The mathematician Theon of Alexandria (ca. 335 – ca. 405), father of the philosopher Hypatia, is described in the 10th century Suda as "the man from the Mouseion," but it is not clear what connection he actually had with it. Zacharias Rhetor and Aeneas of Gaza both speak of a physical space known as the "Mouseion" in the late 5th century.[26]
Legacy
The Ptolemies founded the original Mouseion at a time of transition in Greek history, during the passage from a predominantly oral to a more literary culture. The scholars gathered there included:[5]
- Callimachus, a poet and the first to publish a comprehensive book catalogue (the Pinakes).
- Zenodotos, the first head librarian of the Library of Alexandria, who laid the foundations for Homeric philology.
- Apollonius of Rhodes, epic poet and author of the ground-breaking Argonautica.
- Eratosthenes of Cyrene, head librarian under Ptolemy III Euergetes and a polymath, who worked on literary criticism, philosophy, geography, and mathematics (e.g., his sieve for prime numbers and his measure of the Earth’s circumference).
- Aristarchus of Samothrace, arguably the greatest grammarian of antiquity, who invented conventional signs nowadays used in critical editions.
- Didymos of Alexandria, known as βιβλιολάθας (“Book-Forgetting”), who reportedly composed more than 4,000 commentaries on classical authors.
The members of the Mouseion ensured the preservation and production of historical, literary, and scientific works, which would remain part of the Western heritage for centuries, and thanks to their efforts today one can still read Homer and the tragedians.[2][5]
As an institution dedicated to the Muses, the word mouseion became the source for the modern word museum.[3] In early modern France, it denoted as much a community of scholars brought together under one roof as it did the collections themselves. French and English writers often referred to these collections originally as a "cabinet of curiosities." A catalogue of the 17th century collection of John Tradescant the Elder and his son John Tradescant the Younger was the founding core of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It was published as Musaeum Tradescantianum: or, a Collection of Rarities. Preserved at South-Lambeth near London by John Tradescant (1656).
References
- ^ The relation of the institutions is still a matter of debate. The Mouseion is discussed by P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972: vol. I: 213–219 etc), and Mostafa el-Addabi, The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria (Paris 1990: 84–90).
- ^ ISBN 978-3-540-20068-0.
- ^ Liddell & Scott
- ISBN 978-1-4008-4600-9.
- ^ CiteSeerX 10.1.1.158.2953
- OCLC 548489.
- ^ Johannes Tzetzes' remarks in an introduction to Aristotle.
- ^ The Ptolemaic dynasty displayed these in their palace nearby.
- ^ Bazin, The Museum Age 1967: 16.
- ^ ISBN 9789004305069.
- ^ ISSN 0024-2306.
- ^ a b "Mouseion". www.dailywriting.net. Archived from the original on 2011-07-21. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
- ^ PMID 11440429.
- ^ Strabo, Geography 17.1.8, noted by Bagnall 2002: 57 note 39.
- ^ Majcherek, G. (2018). 'Crumbs from the table'-archeological remains of Hellenistic Alexandria. In C. S. Zerefos & M. V. Vardinoyannis (Eds.), Hellenistic Alexandria (pp. 71–85). Archaeopress.
- ^ S2CID 194126728.
- ISBN 978-0-521-23646-1.
- ^ Daniel Heller-Roazen, "Tradition's Destruction: On the Library of Alexandria" October, 100, Obsolescence (Spring 2002: 133–1530 esp. p. 140.
- ^ Fraser, P. M. (1972). Ptolemaic Alexandria (Vol. 1), p. 333. Oxford.
- ISBN 978-1-107-01256-1.
- ^ Nesselrath, H. G. (2012). Did it burn or not? Caesar and the Great Library of Alexandria: a new look at the sources. In I. Volt & J. Päll (Eds.), Quattuor Lustra: Papers celebrating the 20th anniversary of the re-establishment of classical studies at the University of Tartu (pp. 56–74). Tartu.
- ^ Edward Jay Watts, (2008), City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, page 148. University of California Press
- ^ Suetonius, Claudius, 42
- ^ a b Edward Jay Watts, (2008), City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, p. 147. University of California Press
- ISBN 978-1-4437-2783-9.
- ^ a b c Edward Jay Watts, (2008), City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, p. 150. University of California Press
Further reading
- MacLeod, Roy M., The Library of Alexandria: Centre of learning in the ancient world, 2000.
- El-Abbadi, Mostafa, The life and fate of the ancient library of Alexandria, 1990.
- Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, 1987.
- Lee, Paula Young, "The Musaeum of Alexandria and the formation of the 'Museum' in eighteenth-century France," in The Art Bulletin, September 1997.