- Looks after
- Memory, and mother of the Muses
- Often shown with
- Pools and springs, in the later tradition.
Mnemosyne
Μνημοσύνη
Mnemosyne is the Titaness of memory. Zeus spent nine nights with her, and she bore the nine Muses.
Mnemosyne is one of the twelve Titans, and her name is simply the Greek word for memory. Her importance is as the mother of the Muses.
Hesiod says Zeus lay with her for nine nights, away from the other gods, and a year later she bore nine daughters, all with the same mind and with hearts set on song. In a culture where poetry was learned by heart and performed aloud, this made sense. Memory was the root of every art, and a poet's craft started with her.
A pool of Mnemosyne also appears in the underworld in the gold tablets of Orphic and Bacchic believers. The dead were told to drink from her pool, not from the spring of Lethe (forgetting).
In later art and language
Her name gave English mnemonic, a memory aid, and mnemonics.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 53-62, 915-917
- Gold tablets from Petelia and Hipponion