Early mazes, like the one on the coin, are strange because they don't present any choices of direction and thus could not bewilder Theseus, even without his ball of twine.
If I understand correctly, the article says the "maze" was actually the many rooms of the Cretan palace. The word "labyrinth" comes from the sacred ax called "labrys" used to kill the bulls during sacrifice. The minotaur was an invention symbolizing a foreign power that Athens fought with and will overcome?
The big problem that the article glosses over is that "labrys" is neither Minoan (to our limited knowledge) nor Greek, but Lydian: the Roman-era author Plutarch in Ætia Romana et Græca tells us that the Lydians call the double-headed axe λάβρυν, and people have assumed that it must have a nominative λάβρυς. The Lydians lived in Anatolia, not Crete. The Carians, another Anatolian people neighboring the Lydians, had a place called Labraunda, and coins minted there in Roman times have a double-headed axe, but that's more than a thousand years after the Cretans. There's no good evidence that the Minoans knew the word "labrys" or connected it to axes or the labyrinth. Moreover, it's not clear that the axes we have were or could have been functional rather than votive or ornamental, as most are thin and weak, so assuming that they were used to kill bulls is a stretch.
The article mentions that Sappho referenced the Athenians sending sacrifices to Crete but I can't find the fragment anywhere and I'm guessing it doesn't exist.
I always considered https://files.blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/397... the true one
the Master
Early mazes, like the one on the coin, are strange because they don't present any choices of direction and thus could not bewilder Theseus, even without his ball of twine.
If I understand correctly, the article says the "maze" was actually the many rooms of the Cretan palace. The word "labyrinth" comes from the sacred ax called "labrys" used to kill the bulls during sacrifice. The minotaur was an invention symbolizing a foreign power that Athens fought with and will overcome?
The big problem that the article glosses over is that "labrys" is neither Minoan (to our limited knowledge) nor Greek, but Lydian: the Roman-era author Plutarch in Ætia Romana et Græca tells us that the Lydians call the double-headed axe λάβρυν, and people have assumed that it must have a nominative λάβρυς. The Lydians lived in Anatolia, not Crete. The Carians, another Anatolian people neighboring the Lydians, had a place called Labraunda, and coins minted there in Roman times have a double-headed axe, but that's more than a thousand years after the Cretans. There's no good evidence that the Minoans knew the word "labrys" or connected it to axes or the labyrinth. Moreover, it's not clear that the axes we have were or could have been functional rather than votive or ornamental, as most are thin and weak, so assuming that they were used to kill bulls is a stretch.
partially related..
the Minotaur is one of the main "characters" in Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov.
https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Sorrow-Georgi-Gospodinov/dp/1...
https://losangelesreview.org/book-review-the-physics-of-sorr...
English version, but paywalled: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/...
(can read in FF's "reader mode").
Archive link: https://archive.ph/gsv8r
It seems disabling JavaScript on that page also loads the full content.
The article mentions that Sappho referenced the Athenians sending sacrifices to Crete but I can't find the fragment anywhere and I'm guessing it doesn't exist.
The article is in french
So we know the minotaur probably didn't speak English.
My browser has a translate feature. I imagine it's pretty standard.
This appears to be the English version : https://archive.is/gsv8r