The Labyrinth was a mythical palace in the Minoan Crete with various branches, entrances and exits. It was built by Daedalus, a legendary craftsman and engineer on behalf of the mythical king of Crete, Minos, to imprison the mythical monster Minotaur, who had the head of a bull and the body of a man. It was so complicated that even Daedalus, its creator, had trouble finding a way out.
According to mythology, the city of Athens had lost a war with Crete and the Athenians were forced to send 7 young men and 7 young women each year to be sacrificed to Minotaur. The son of the king of Athens, Aegeus, Theseus, decided to go to Crete to kill Minotaur. Minos' daughter, Ariadne, gave him a ball of thread so that he would not lose his way, and Theseus managed to find and kill Minotaur. On his way back to Athens, his companions forgot to change the black sails of the ship that carried them and Theseus' father, Aegeus, seeing the black sails from afar, thought that Theseus was killed and fell into the sea and drowned. Since then, this sea has been called the Aegean Sea.
The Labyrinth was a complex underground structure with narrow winding passages. These corridors returned to a continuous dead end. Labyrinth entrants roamed the corridors and made a round tour without ever being able to find the exit. Over the centuries, the shape of the Labyrinth has been imprinted on ceramic fragments, rock engravings, Cretan coins, mosaic images, copper engravings, maps, and even banknotes. It has influenced architecture in Europe, and especially in the Baltic countries, where many stone labyrinths were built, and garden architecture, already, since the Middle Ages.
Some believe that the Labyrinth symbolizes the human intellect in its complexity. The spiral corridors symbolize the spiraling evolution of Creation and brain function and anatomy. The journey to the center of the Labyrinth and the unfolding of the thread of Ariadne can mean the journey to the center of our being and understanding of our nature.
Nowadays, the location of the Labyrinth is disputed. Excavations at Knossos, from 1879 by Minos Kalokairinos to 1900 by Arthur Evans, revealed a labyrinthine building, with large sections dedicated to Minoan worship and inscriptions on Linear B tablets, and convinced historians of the time that there was the Labyrinth. However, nowadays, the cave of Gortyna, a natural labyrinthine creation, 51 km from Heraklion, claims the title of the Labyrinth with its huge halls, corridors and branches with a total length of over 2,500 m. To overturn the belief that the Labyrinth is identified with Knossos, there should be a serious archaeological study in Gortyna to prove that, indeed, the Labyrinth was there.
One thing is certain, the legend of the Labyrinth will never cease to fascinate and excite the imagination.
(More articles about Crete on www.gomega.gr)
