Jots about Titles

Websters, detail of a black-figure vase in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection

 

In English, we have borrowed this word “museum” in its Latin version (musaeum or museum) from the Greek “μουσαιον” (mousaion). A mousaion was a temple or shrine of the μουσαι (mousai), that is, the Muses. The Royal Library of Alexandria, founded in the third century BC was an extension of the mousaion there, and, as such, became a significant inspiration for the Enlightenment-era conception of the “museum” as it arose on the wings of Neoclassicism and Philhellenism — as well as colonialism and nationalism – in Europe and North America. 

The mousai themselves were ancient Greek goddesses or fairies associated with thought, inquiry, memory and art, especially the art of oral poëts. Their mother was Mnemosynē, the goddess of memory, and their paternity is most often attributed to Zeus. Kalliopē, the mousa of epic poëtry, is sometimes counted as the eldest and chief of the mousai and the great bard Orpheus was said to be her son. Ourania is the mousa of astrology and knowledge of the future, and is the patroness of the philosophers as well as those who seek progress, improvement and innovation. Kleiō (Clio) is the mousa associated most closely with history. 

In ancient Greek society, two of the most emblematic occupations of women were that of spinning and weaving. Penelopē, Odysseus’ faithful spouse cleverly stalls for time by finishing her duty to her supposedly dead husband: the weaving of a princely burial shroud for her father-in-law, as it is Odysseus’ filial duty to provide his father with a fitting burial. Throughout Homeric literature and beyond, class and status among women is reflected in the materials and colors which they employ in their weaving, and it is the faithful wife who occupies herself with this task, as witnessed by the reformed Helenē encountered in the Odyssey. Weaving is a deeply symbolic occupation, requiring careful planning, attention to detail, patience, physical skill and cunning. Not surprisingly, then, it is also the task of goddesses, especially Athēna, goddess of wisdom, women’s work and the science of war — as well as of her rival and victim, Arakhnē, the spider woman. In a similar vein, the μοιραι (the Fates) spun out the lives of individual humans like yarn. Another version of the weaver’s web, the fishing net, is used by sea goddesses in the Mediterranean and the northern seas alike to entangle sailors lost at sea. 

Not coincidently, the cyber tool which you are currently using in order to read this is called the “internet” and the “worldwide web”. 

Is the pattern beginning to form? 

– Christopher Shaw Gust 

"Arachne" by Gustave Doré, from his illustrations for "The Divine Comedy"