FORTEAN TRAVELLER
No 98. Knossos, Crete
Everybody, I believe, treasures at least one tale that speaks to them, and it doesn’t matter if it comes from the other side of the world. My father told me the myth of the Minotaur when I was too young to understand the difference between mythology and fairy tales. On the island of Crete a wise man named Dædalus built a labyrinth to house a half-human, half-bull monster who had to be appeased with regular human sacrifices, and whom everybody called the Minotaur. Athenian prince Theseus wanted to confront the monster, but no man, not even wise Dædalus, knew how to get to the heart of the maze where the Minotaur lived. However, my father continued, there was a smart young woman named Ariadne who did. She gave the prince a ball of thread so that he could unwind it to mark his way and follow it back to the entrance.
Helped by her cunning, Theseus killed the Minotaur.
The story had a monster, a labyrinth, a smart heroine and a great deed; but what I found most exciting was that, unlike in other favourites of mine (Puss in Boots or Snow White), the place where the adventure occurred could be seen on a map. Naturally, I decided I had to visit the island of Crete, although this didn’t happen until nearly three decades later. The turquoise sea and the promise of a feast of olives and kalitsounia were appealing, but if I’m honest, I was just answering the call of the myth, of the monster trapped in the labyrinth and the mysterious Ariadne, wise as a witch.
Knossos: is it the Labyrinth?
It doesn’t matter that Knossos was likely a political centre and not the home of a mythical monster: the legend seems tangible when you set foot in the ruins of the palace, just three miles to the south of Heraklion, the busy capital of the island. Knossos is the second most visited ancient site in Greece; a vast, positively labyrinthine structure, which explains why it’s generally identified with Dædalus’s creation. Our bus stops on an avenue of tourist shops crammed with straw hats and Minotaur fridge magnets. We’ve been awake since six to avoid the crowds and it pays off: it’s just after 8am now; the morning light is exquisite and the ruins are silent.
The palace became a cultural icon thanks to Sir Arthur Evans, whose bronze bust, brooding into the sky, welcomes the visitors by the main entrance. He excavated Knossos from 1900 and was responsible for the controversial restorations that became its trademark: the bright rusty-red columns and the vibrant, stylised frescoes depicting dancing princes and princesses, ecstatic bullleapers and sinuous dolphins. With his archæological work in Knossos, Evans unveiled a sophisticated and hedonistic civilisation that fascinated the masses, much like Schlieman’s Troy 1 or Howard Carter’s Tutankhamun. He called them the Minoans after Karl Hoeck’s initial use of the word, in honour of King Minos, Crete’s legendary ruler. Like Schlieman’s discovery of Troy, the excavation in Knossos had a clear euhemeristic appeal: with it, Knossos emerged from the darkness where myths dwell, suggesting that there was, perhaps, a historical basis for the myth of the Minotaur.
Traces of the Minotaur
Overlooking the scenery at the East Propyleia in the palace there’s a pair of stylised bull horns, awe-inspiring in size, almost like the Minotaur’s. They’re a modern reproduction of a protective symbol that Evans called the horns of consecration, common in Minoan Crete, usually placed on the roofs of buildings of religious significance, tombs and shrines. The ubiquituous symmetric double axe is also part of the iconography of Minoan bull sacrifice. Its name, the labrys, is probably the root of the word ‘labyrinth’, the palace of the double axe, that referred to Knossos. But perhaps the most suggestive traces of this ancient civilisation are the taurokatharpsia or bullleaping frescoes, representing bold rituals with stunts and acrobatics. Reproductions can be seen on the walls of Knossos, though we have to wait until the following day to see the originals at the Archæological Museum in Heraklion.
When we think of bull-worshipping civilisations, the Minoans might be
the first to spring to mind, but bulls have been considered sacred animals since Antiquity. Aurochs and bison were already depicted in Palæolithic caves. What makes bull symbolism fascinating is that it shares both lunar and solar qualities: the Egyptian bull Apis or the Sumerian Gugalanna were lunar deities, yet the Vedic god Sûrya was solar and the Mythraic Mysteries of the Roman Empire are a celebration of a Sun god killing a bull.
But let’s get back to the Cretan monster. Since Homer, poetic tradition has considered the Labyrinth the home to Asterion, or Minos’s bull, the Minotaur. He was the monstrous descendant of the Cretan bull, a beautiful snow-coloured creature that Poseidon gave to king Minos as a gift. Minos refused to sacrifice it to the god, so Poseidon punished the king’s hubris by cursing his wife Pasiphæ to fall madly in love with the white bull – so much so that Pasiphæ desperately asked for the help of one of the wisest men in Greece: the mythical inventor Dædalus. He built a hollow wooden cow for her to hide in and copulate with the animal. Thus, the unlikely affair was consummated, and the Minotaur – “the twin form of bull and man”, as described by Ovid 2 – was born. He was nursed by Pasiphæ until his ferocity became impossible to tame. Then the king had to seek advice from the oracle of Delphi. The pythia told him to have Dædalus build a maze to house the monster. However, the Minotaur would have to be appeased with regular human sacrifices: every seven to nine years, seven young men and seven maidens would sail from Athens to feed the monster. One of these chosen seven was Theseus, the prince of Athens, who would eventually kill Asterion.
Human sacrifices
Perhaps because we want to believe that there is some truth in myths, it’s tempting to search for an historical explanation for them. JG Frazer certainly attempted to do so in his seminal (and deliciously Victorian) The