Everything about The Musaeum totally explained
The
Musaeum at Alexandria (
Greek: Μουσείον της Αλεξάνδρειας), which included the famous
Library of Alexandria, was an institution apparently founded by
Ptolemy I Soter or, perhaps more likely,
Ptolemy II Philadelphus at ancient
Alexandria in
Egypt which 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 gallery of sacred texts.
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 didn't have a collection of sculpture and painting presented as works of art, 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 at Princeton or to the
Collège de France on Paris."
Strabo gives an account of the Musaeum as it was in his day:
"The Mouseion is also part of the palaces, possessing a peripatos and exedra and large oikos, in which the common table 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."
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 of the same name, which was the founding core of the
Ashmolean Museum in
Oxford, was published as
Musaeum Tradescantianum: or, a Collection of Rarities. Preserved at South-Lambeth near London by John Tradescant, 1656.
The classic period of the Musaeum didn't 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, don't mention any further directors.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Musaeum'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://musaeum.totallyexplained.com">Musaeum Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
