Mouseion

[2] Originally, the word mouseion meant any place that was dedicated to the Muses, often related to the study of music or poetry, but later associated with sites of learning such as Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum.

[7] As a community gathered together under the protection of the Muses, the Mouseion remained supported over the centuries by the patronage of the royal family of the Ptolemies, and later by that of the Roman emperors.

[3] Unlike the modern museum in the sense that has developed since the Renaissance, the Mouseion of Alexandria did not have a collection of sculpture and painting presented as works of art, as was assembled by the Ptolemies' rival Attalus at the Library of Pergamum.

[14]According to this description, the Mouseion featured a roofed walkway, an arcade of seats, and a communal dining room where scholars routinely ate and shared ideas.

[12] The building may have also hosted private study rooms, residential quarters, and lecture halls, based on similar structures that were built much later in Alexandria.

[5][10] During the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II, at a time of territorial losses and political turmoil in Egypt, most intellectuals were either killed or expelled from the city, including the last recorded head librarian of the Library of Alexandria, Aristarchus of Samothrace, who supposedly was forced to resign his position in 145 BC and died in exile a few years later.

[26] The Brucheion, the complex of palaces and gardens that included the Mouseion, was probably destroyed by fire on the orders of Emperor Aurelian in 272 AD, although it is not known with certainty how much of the original buildings existed at the time.

The scholars gathered there included:[5] The members of the Mouseion ensured the preservation and production of historical, literary, and scientific works, which would remain part of the Western heritage for centuries, and thanks to their efforts today one can still read Homer and the tragedians.