Who was the Greek goddess of memory and mother of the Muses?

Mnemosyne was the Greek goddess of memory and the mother of the nine Muses.

Mnemosyne was one of the Titans, born to Uranus, the Sky, and Gaia, the Earth. Her name derives from mnēmē, the Greek word for memory or remembrance. With Zeus, she became the mother of the nine Muses, who governed major forms of artistic, intellectual and scientific inspiration.

Hesiod’s Theogony says Zeus joined with Mnemosyne for nine nights, after which the nine Muses were born. They were Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Erato, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania. Their traditional fields included epic poetry, history, music, tragedy, dance, comedy and astronomy.

Mnemosyne’s importance went beyond genealogy. In an oral culture, poets depended on memory to preserve and perform long epic traditions, so invocations to Memory and the Muses helped establish poetic authority. In Orphic traditions, a pool or river of Mnemosyne offered remembrance, contrasting with Lethe, whose waters brought forgetfulness. Mnemosyne is sometimes confused with the related figure Mneme.