Jan Assmann on the meaning of "myth"

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)