Never found · building · from c. 290 BCE

The Mouseion

Μουσεῖον

Known · AttestedExistence: AttestedConjectured · Our reconstructionLocation: Never foundConjectured · After an analogy: Athenian PeripatosForm: After an analogyafter Athenian Peripatos

Never found.

A shrine of the Muses and a salaried community of scholars, poets, physicians and mathematicians, with a priest at its head, appointed first by the kings and then by the emperors. It was part of the palaces. Its members held property in common and dined together at royal expense, and the sceptic Timon mocked them as birds in "the birdcage of the Muses".

The evidence: Strabo 17.1.8 is the only description: a walk, an exedra with seats, a large house with the common dining hall, and a priest. No remains have been identified. The model was the Mouseion of Aristotle's school at Athens, which Theophrastus's will provides for.

Within The Brucheion (royal quarter).

Mouseion?
On the plan of the city, in its own line: solid where the position is known, dashed where it is conjectured.

This place through time

  1. from c. 290 BCE · Its years, as the sources give them.
  2. c. 300 BCE · Euclid teaches geometry under Ptolemy I Known: probable
  3. c. 295–283 BCE · The Mouseion and the Library founded Known: probable
  4. c. 270s–240s BCE · Callimachus compiles the Pinakes Known: attested
  5. 145 BCE · Ptolemy VIII drives out the scholars Known: attested
  6. 30 BCE · Egypt becomes Roman; Caesar appoints the Mouseion's priest Known: attested
  7. c. 25–20 BCE · Strabo describes the Mouseion and names no library Known: attested
  8. 130 CE · Hadrian at the Mouseion Known: attested
  9. 272–273 CE · Aurelian's war ruins the palace quarter Known: attested
  10. c. 364 CE · Theon, the last known man "of the Mouseion" Known: attested

In the show

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Sources (5)
  • Strabo, Geography 17.1.8 (opens in a new tab)
  • Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1.22d (Timon fr. 12 Diels)
  • Diogenes Laertius 5.51–53
  • P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) 1:305–335
  • A. Erskine, "Culture and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Museum and Library of Alexandria", Greece & Rome 42.1 (1995) 38–48