Musaeum

"Temple of the Muses" redirects here. For the former bookshop in London, see James Lackington.

The Ancient Library of Alexandria.

The Musaeum or Mouseion at Alexandria (Classical Greek Μουσεῖον τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας), which included the famous Library of Alexandria,^[1] was an institution founded, according to Johannes Tzetzes, by Ptolemy I Soter or, perhaps more likely, by Ptolemy II Philadelphus^[2] at Hellenistic Alexandria in Egypt. The Mouseion remained supported by the patronage of the royal family of the Ptolemies. Such a Greek Mouseion was the home of music or poetry, a philosophical school and library such as Plato's Academy, also a storehouse of texts.^[3] Mouseion, connoting an assemblage gathered together under the protection of the Muses, was the title given to a collection of stories about the esteemed writers of the past assembled by Alcidamas, an Athenian sophist of the fourth century BCE.

Though the Musaeum at Alexandria did not have a collection of sculpture and painting presented as works of art,^[4] as was assembled by the Ptolemies' rival Attalus at Pergamon, it did have a room devoted to the study of anatomy and an installation for astronomical observations. Rather than simply a museum in the sense that has developed since the Renaissance, it was an institution that brought together some of the best scholars of the Hellenistic world, as Germain Bazin compared it, "analogous to the modern Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton or to the Collège de France in Paris."^[5] In the 21st century, the nearest equivalent is a university.

The edited versions of the Greek literary canon that we know today, from Homer and Hesiod forward, exist in editions that were collated and corrected by the scholars assembled in the Musaeum at Alexandria.

This original Musaeum or Institution of the Muses was the source for the modern usage of the word museum. 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 referred to these collections as a "cabinet" as in "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.

Appearance

The Greek geographer Strabo described the Musaeum and Library as richly decorated edifices in a campus of buildings and gardens.

"The Mouseion is also part of the palaces, possessing a peripatos^[6] and exedra^[7] and large oikos, in which the common table^[8] of the philologoi, men who are members of the Mouseion, is located. This synodos has property in common and a priest in charge of the Mouseion, formerly appointed by the kings, but now by Caesar." --Strabo ^[9]

The Mouseion featured a roofed walkway, an arcade of seats, and a communal dining room where scholars routinely ate and shared ideas. The building was filled with private study rooms, residential quarters, lecture halls, and theaters.^[10]

More than 1,000 scholars lived in the Mouseion at a given time. Staff members and scholars were salaried by the Mouseion and paid no taxes. They also received free meals, free room and board, and free servants. The Mouseion was administered by a priest appointed by the Pharaoh.^[10]

The Mouseion's scholars conducted scientific research, published, lectured, and collected as much literature as possible from the known world. In addition to Greek works, foreign texts were translated from Assyrian, Persian, Jewish, Indian, and other sources.^[10]

Notable scholars

The following scholars are known to have studied, written, or performed their experiments at the Musaeum of Alexandria.^[11]

• Archimedes - father of engineering
• Aristarchus of Samos - proposed the first heliocentric system of the universe
• Callimachus - a noted poet, critic and scholar
• Erasistratus - physician and co-founder of the Academy of Medicine in Alexandria along with Herophilus
• Eratosthenes - proved the earth is round and accurately calculated its circumference
• Euclid - father of geometry
• Herophilus - notable physician and founder of the scientific method
• Hipparchus - founder of trigonometry
• Hypatia - considered the first notable woman in mathematics
• Pappus - mathematician
• Hero - father of mechanics

Destruction

The classic period of the Musaeum did not survive the purge and expulsion of most of the intellectuals attached to it in 145 BCE, when Aristarchus of Samothrace resigned his position; at any rate, the sources that best describe the Musaeum and library, Johannes Tzetzes and others, all Byzantine and late, do not mention any further directors.^[12] Emperor Caracalla suppressed the Musaeum in 216.^[13] By this time, the center of learning in Alexandria had already moved to the Serapeum.^[13] The Bruchion, the section of Alexandria that had included the Musaeum, was entirely destroyed by fire on the orders of Emperor Aurelian in 272. The mathematician Theon (ca. 335 – ca. 405), father of Hypatia, is described in his biography as "the man from the Mouseion." It is not known what connection, if any, he actually had with the Musaeum.

Musaeum under the Baths of Trajan, Rome

In July 2011, archaeologists announced the discovery of what they believe was a Roman Musaeum under the Baths of Trajan in Rome.^[14]

Further reading

• CANFORA Luciano, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, 1987. (The only modern history.)
• YOUNG LEE Paula, "The Musaeum of Alexandria and the formation of the 'Museum' in eighteenth-century France," in The Art Bulletin, September 1997.

References

1. ^ The relation of the institutions is still a matter of debate. The Musaeum is discussed by P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972: vol. I:213-19 etc), and Mostafa el-Addabi, The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria (Paris 1990:84-90).
2. ^ There is no ancient source for the founding either of the Library or the Musaeum, Roger S. Bagnall notes, in "Alexandria: Library of Dreams", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146.4 (December 2002:348-362) p. 348. We rely instead on the self-confident but unreliable Byzantine scholar Johannes Tzetzes' remarks in an introduction to Aristotle.
3. ^ Entry Μουσείον at Liddell & Scott
4. ^ The Ptolemaic dynasty displayed these in their palace nearby.
5. ^ Bazin, The Museum Age 1967:16.
6. ^ An open loggia for walking and talking.
7. ^ The curved seat of an exedra is more accommodating to a group conversation than a bench in a straight line.
8. ^ Oikos signifies "household" in the broadest sense; an English analogy might be a university "commons".
9. ^ Strabo, Geography 17.1.8, noted by Bagnall 2002:57 note 39.
10. ^ ^{a b c} DailyWriting.net
11. ^ Idolphin.org
12. ^ Daniel Heller-Roazen, "Tradition's Destruction: On the Library of Alexandria" October, 100, Obsolescence (Spring 2002:133-1530 esp. p. 140.
13. ^ ^{a b} Butler, Alfred, The Arab Conquest of Egypt - And the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion, p. 411.
14. ^ Apollo Mosaic Found in Rome Tunnel, Rossella Lorenzi, 29 July 2011, discovery.com, accessed 21 September 2011