Myths are collective figures of memory,
narrative, lieux de mémoire, loci of
a culture of remembrance. Whether they draw on real or fictitious events is beside
the point; all that matters is that they claim a place in the order of memory,
maintained there by a self-image that, in continually telling them anew,
continually reassures itself of its roots and its goals, its truths and its
dreams. (Jan Assmann, The Invention of
Religion: Faith and covenant in the Book of Exodus [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2018], 75)