MUSAEUM

The 'Musaeum at Alexandria' (Greek: Μουσείον της Αλεξάνδρειας), which included the famous Library of Alexandria, was an institution founded by Ptolemy I at ancient Alexandria in Egypt and under the patronage of the royal familiy of the Ptolemies. See Library of Alexandria.
This original 'Musaeum' or 'Temple of the Muses' was the source for the modern usage of the word. 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.

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References

★ Canfora, Luciano, ''The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World,'' 1987. (The only modern history.)

★ Lee, "The Musaeum of Alexandria and the formation of the 'Museum' in eighteenth-century France," in ''The Art Bulletin,'' September 1997.