LABYRINTH, a structnre having many intricate, winding passages; specifically, the legendary labyrinth of Crete, out of which no one could find his way, but became the prey of the Minotaur. This Greek legend has been interpreted as a sun-myth, and in various other ways, but excavations in Crete since 1900 have shown its foundation in fact, and have local ized the labyrinth beyond reasonable doubt in the ruined °palace* of the Minoan kingdom at Knossas, near Candia. Minos may probably be regarded as a title, like Pharaoh or Caesar, for a line of kings; but the legend of the Minotaur seems to refer to an individual, one of the sea-kings of Crete whose period was about 2000 a.c, This king's son, according to the legend, went to Athens to contend in the games, and becoming victor was murdered by direction of the Athenian king, eus. There upon Minos sent a fleet which subjugated Athens. One condition of the peace was that thereafter, in every ninth year, seven youths and seven maidens should be sent to Crete by Athens, to become the prey of the Minotaur — a monster half human, half bull. When the second time for this ghastly tribute arrived a hero of Kreat prowess, Theseus, volunteered to go. Arrived in Crete he and his companions were immured in a great prison — the Laby rinth; but Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, enamored of Theseus, gave him a sword with which to kill the Minotaur, and a thread to unwind as he was led into the prison-maze, by means of which he could find his way out. The plan succeeded. Theseus and his fellow captives escaped, and the tribute ceased.
When the royal house at Knossas came to be excavated, first by Dr. A. J. Evans in 1900, it was found, °with its long corridors and repeated succession of blind galleries, its tor tuous passages and spacious underground con duit, its bewildering system of small chambers,' that it does, in fact, present many of the char acteristics of a maze. Throughout the ruins of this and all other Minoan buildings, the design called the •double ax" is very prominent in decoration; and it is known that this symbol of divinity and royalty was named alabrys.*
The coincidence of this term with °labyrinth,* together with other evidences of the connec tion of ideas, makes indubitable in the minds of antiquaries that the labyrinth of the legend was this very building. The chief god of the Minoan cult was represented as a bull. Once every nine years the reigning king was obliged to go into the Dictatan Cave (near the present town Lyttos) and renew communication with heaven. It is thought probable that human sacrifices may have been offered to the divinity in the cave on these occasions; that probably captives would be slain rather than citizens; and that the Athenian youths were destined to this sacrifice. Another theory is that vigorous war-captives were rese. ved for the national sport of the bull-ring, in which an athlete seized by the horns a charging bull, then skil fully vaulted to safety over the animal's back. Both men and women acted in this dangerous °bull-grappling* • and captives were probably kept and trained as toreadors for the amuse ment of the populace.
A vast and wonderful temple in Egypt, con structed by Amenemhat III at Hawara, about the time when the Minoan kingdom was in the height of its power, came to be called Labyrinth by the time Herodotus visited it, evidently in allusion to the similarly vast and complicated edifice at Knossas. More recent labyrinths are small, and often merely ornamental in their purpose. That at Clusium, in Italy, was erected by the Etruscans, according to Varro, for the sepulchre of King Porsenna. Imitations of labyrinths, called mazes, were once fashionable in gardening. They were made of hedges; the best known is that at Hampton Court, near London. Consult for the Cretan labyrinth, be sides the reports of exploration, Mosso, 'Nu Palaces of Crete' • Baikie, Sea-Kings of Crete' (London