“… The monster was fed with criminals, but once every nine years, it was“treated”to innocent young men and women. It was the Minotaur - a bull-man hidden in a labyrinth …"
One hundred and twenty years ago, in March 1900, the Englishman Arthur Evans made the greatest archaeological discovery, equal to which there are no more than a dozen in the entire history of science: on the island of Crete, he discovered the remains of the legendary labyrinth of the Minotaur on the Greek island of Crete, and began excavating the gigantic palace of Knossos - structures equal in size to the whole ancient city.
According to ancient Greek myth, an amazing palace-labyrinth was built for King Minos by the greatest master of antiquity, Daedalus.
The legend of the Minotaur existed for thousands of years before Evans. He simply gave the name to his find - the Palace of Minos, the king of Ancient Crete.
The Palace of Knossos is the palace of Minos.
King Minos originally lived in this palace himself, and then settled in it the terrible bull-man Minotaur. We learn about its origin from ancient Greek legends. According to one of them, the god Poseidon sent a huge and fierce bull to King Minos, which he had to sacrifice to the gods. But the bull was such a perfect creation of nature that the king disobeyed Poseidon: he did not want to lose the bull. And the wife of Minos Pasiphae was completely imbued with an unnatural passion for the divine bull and from connection with him gave birth to a terrible monster - the Minotaur.
Pasiphia and her son Minotaur.
He had a human body and a bull's head, was incredibly ferocious and fed exclusively on the young and beautiful offspring of noble Athenian families.
Promotional video:
Wooden model of the Knossos Palace at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.
According to legend, King Minos imprisoned the Minotaur in his palace and every nine years sent seven Athenian boys and girls to be devoured by him. Minos imposed this terrible human tribute on the Athenians for killing his son Androgeus. The unfortunate victims entered the luxurious labyrinth palace, and never left it.
Theseus and the Minotaur in the labyrinth.
According to legend, the ancient Greek hero Theseus, the son of the god Poseidon, stopped this atrocity. He decided to defeat the evil monster and put an end to human casualties. He entered the labyrinth, found the Minotaur in the huge palace, fought with him and defeated him in battle.
Palace of Knossos (reconstruction).
And the daughter of King Minos, Princess Ariadne, helped him not to get lost in the labyrinth. The girl fell in love with the beautiful Theseus and gave him a skein of thread. Unwinding Ariadne's thread, Theseus was able to orient himself in the maze and go back, and even led the boys and girls he had saved with him.
Minotaur.
World fame to the English archaeologist did not come because of the fairy tale about the bull. Thanks to him and the 32 excavators he hired, this unique building, the PALACE of MINOS, was opened on the hill of Knossos near the capital of Crete! It has no analogues in the ancient world.
Reconstruction of the furnishings of the Knossos Palace.
The area of the palace is 16,000 sq. m, it has 300 rooms, corridors of different sizes, there are patios. The palace was built so that all premises - living and utility ones - were illuminated to the maximum. The number of floors varies from two to four, the windows are huge.
In the palace, water supply and even drainage were established, something like a sewage system: during the excavations, they found bathrooms and toilets with a water supply system!
Found during excavations and the "throne room". Evans believed that the chairs in it were for the king and queen. Later, scientists determined another purpose of the room with the ceremonial frescoes. This was the place where the deity appeared. The deity was feminine. A man wearing a bull mask took part in the sacraments in honor of him (hence the myth went from here). The main thing is that what Arthur Evans actually discovered was a previously unknown civilization. She was named Minoan, after the name of the same king.
Painting of the Knossos Palace of King Minos.
The Minoans had everything of their own: religion, science, art. They were engaged in sea trade, sometimes pirated. They were friends with Ancient Egypt. It was they who created what would later be called the palace culture. “These are complex multifunctional structures that show the serious social structure of society,” says Nikolai Sudarev, a researcher at the Institute of Archeology:
Minotaur.
Of course, it's not a fact that this particular palace was mentioned in the legend, but Arthur Evans wanted to believe that this was so. True, later researchers pointed out that the ancient Greek myths, which mention the terrible Minotaur, are older than the palace found in Crete. But their opponents argued that it was difficult to establish the date of the first construction: during its long history, the Palace of Knossos was destroyed and rebuilt several times, and only around 1380 BC was it destroyed and abandoned completely. Whether it is true or not, at the suggestion of Arthur Evans, the Palace of Knossos was firmly connected in the minds of people of the 20th and then the 21st century with the myth of the Minotaur.
Amphorae on the territory of the Palace of Knossos.
The attitude of the scientific world to Arthur Evans is rather complex and ambiguous. On the one hand, he really made an extremely important discovery of the whole Minoan civilization. On the other hand, he treated the ancient ruins in a different way than is customary in the scientific world.
Palace of Minos.
In parallel with the excavations, the archaeologist was reconstructing the fragments of the palace in the form that he and his associate, the architect Theodore Fife, imagined. So now the palace is more of a tourist attraction than a true monument of ancient architecture. It is difficult for modern visitors to separate Evans' spectacular remake from ancient buildings. But it is precisely because of its spectacularity that the Palace of Knossos is the most visited tourist attraction in Crete. Unlike those ancient ruins that were untouched and remained in their original form.
Palace of Minos.
How the Minoan civilization died out and where it disappeared is unknown. It is still unclear who was hiding behind the Minotaur. According to one of the versions of ancient historians, the bull was not even there. The name of the Taurus was given to the military leader of King Minos. Taurus organized competitions in which they demanded teenage slaves as a prize for the winner. Isn't it a monster?