Attempting to understand the term "mosaic" (part 1)
St Ambrose mosaic icon
created by yours truly
"mosaic"
Mosaic originally comes from "men-".
Nothing to do with men.
This is Indo-European and it means "to think".
Although it does makes sense as mosaic making involves a specific thought process.
But my challenge here is to understand where the word "mosaic" comes from and most importantly why this is the established term.
I have used a combination of sources to find answers to my questions. Primarily I have found refuge to etymological and normal dictionaries, Wikipedia and 19th century books in Greek.
When we think of “mosaic” evidently, there are two words that immediately pop up:
- museum
- muse
Consideration #1 (historical context)
While I was trying to evaluate the information that I had in front of me, there were a few questions. Stupid as they may have been, I’m glad I wrote them down in my notes because this kind of unfolded a revelation.
And the stupid questions that I “dared” ask myself were:
- How come out of the official nine Muses, there wasn’t a muse for mosaic?
- Why would mosaic derive from museum?
For the 1st question the answer wasn’t difficult but – at least to me – it made me feel rather intrigued as if I was dealing with a mystery. It seemed so simple:
Mosaic art – as we know it, in its tessellated form – was established as an art form throughout the Hellenistic era in places like Pella, Olynthus, Delos, Eritrea etc. The nice muses, an Ancient Greek myth, were antecedent to the era we are investigating.
The 2nd question invoked more questions....
- When did the word mosaic (or mosaico) start to emerge to connote what we know as mosaic (art) today and what data do we have for this?
- How old is the term museum and what did it mean?
So I started investigating museumas a word, term and meaning.
According to Wikipedia, the first museum, the Musaeum or museionof Alexandria (2-3rd century BC) had nothing to do with art. Funny! It was an institution, home of music or poetry, a philosophical school and library, a place where texts were stored.
Roughly during the same period of the existence of the museum of Alexandria we observe the evolution of mosaic art with the use of cut stones. According to the data provided on a variety of sites, mosaic evolved as an art form using cut stones is dated 3rdcent. BC.
So indisputably, mosaic art was established as an art form using tessellated mosaic tiles throughout Hellenistic times.
Examples of this period that marked mosaic’s future profoundly are the mosaics in Delos, Greece that date from the last decades of 2nd century B.C. to the first decades and El-Djem in Tunisia.
While reading and taking notes for this post I was asking a new question.
- Why would they give the word mosaicoto an art form if the word (museion, musaeum) that gave birth to mosaic was an institution for philosophy and music?
I was beginning to make radical thoughts such as:
1. Mouseion or musaeum (the one in Alexandra) was a place where stories were collected and assembled as per Wikipedia's entry on Musaeum of Alexandria. This description alone – collection and assembly – resonates mosaic art.
2. The Mouseion of Alexandria was richly decorated. Now we have Hellenistic times and rich decoration. What's more posh than mosaic floors?
Are you following me?
Mosaic inspired by the functions of the museum.
Yeah, I know. This is rather unorthodox.
I would thus build a temporary theory along these lines:
Mosaic had to be either associated with the Muses or the Museum. In my humble opinion – not being a linguist or a scholar – it wouldn’t make sense to link the term “mosaic” to both.
We know that music derives from the Muses but we never associate music with Museum.
So why should we do it with mosaic?
(to be continued)
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