Mnemosyne (Greek ,
IPA in RP and in General American) (sometimes confused with
Mneme or compared with
Memoria) was the personification of
memory in
Greek mythology. This
titaness was the daughter of
Gaia and
Uranus and the mother of the
Muses by
Zeus.In
Hesiod's
Theogony, kings and poets receive their powers of authoritative speech from their possession of Mnemosyne and their special relationship with the Muses.Zeus and Mnemosyne slept together for nine consecutive nights and thereby created the nine muses. Mnemosyne was also the name for a river in
Hades, counterpart to the river
Lethe, according to a series of
4th century BC Greek funerary inscriptions in
dactylic hexameter. Dead souls drank from Lethe so they would not remember their past lives when
reincarnated. Initiates were encouraged to drink from the river Mnemosyne when they died, instead of Lethe. These inscriptions may have been connected with a private
mystery religion, or with
Orphic poetry (see Zuntz, 1971).
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[Greek] Mnemosyne is the personification of memory and its goddess. She is a daughter of Gaia and Uranus and the mother of the nine Muses by Zeus, her nephew.
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