Minotaur

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Minotaur

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, the Minotaur (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: , Min?tauros) was a creature that was part man and part bull

Bull (mythology)

Appearances of the Bull in mythology and worship are widespread in the ancient world. It is the subject of various cultural and Religion incarnations, as well as modern mentions in new age cultures....
. It dwelt at the center of the Labyrinth

Labyrinth

In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos....
, which was an elaborate maze

Maze

A maze is a complex tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route. In everyday speech, both maze and labyrinth denote a complex and confusing series of pathways, but technically the maze is distinguished from the labyrinth....
-like construction built for King Minos

Minos

In Greek mythology, Minos was a mythical king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa . After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Greek Underworld....
of Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the List of islands in the Mediterranean largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? ....
and designed by the architect Daedalus

Daedalus

In Greek mythology, Daedalus was a most skillful artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images that seemed to move about....
and his son Icarus

Icarus

Icarus, Ikarus, or Ikaros, is a proper noun with a variety of meanings, most deriving from its use in Greek mythology:* Icarus , the son of Daedalus according to Greek mythology...
who were ordered to build it to hold the Minotaur. The historical site of Knossos

Knossos

Knossos , also known as the Knossos Palace is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and probably the ceremonial and political center of the Minoan civilization and culture....
is usually identified as the site of the labyrinth. The Minotaur was eventually killed by Theseus

Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was a legendary king of Athens, son of Aethra , and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, with whom Aethra lay in one night....
.

The term Minotaur derives from the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ????ta???? (Min?tauros), Etymologically

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
is compound of the name ????? (Minos) and the noun ta???? (tauros) "bull", thus it translated as "Bull of Minos

Minos

In Greek mythology, Minos was a mythical king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa . After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Greek Underworld....
".

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In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek language

Bull (mythology)

Labyrinth

In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos....
, which was an elaborate maze

Maze

Minos

In Greek mythology, Minos was a mythical king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa . After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Greek Underworld....
of Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the List of islands in the Mediterranean largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? ....
and designed by the architect Daedalus

Daedalus

In Greek mythology, Daedalus was a most skillful artificer, or craftsman, so skillful that he was said to have invented images that seemed to move about....
and his son Icarus

Icarus

Knossos

Theseus

Greek language

Etymology

Minos

In Greek mythology, Minos was a mythical king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa . After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Greek Underworld....
". The bull was known in Crete as Asterion

Asterion

Birth and appearance

After he ascended the throne of Crete, Minos struggled with his brothers for the right to rule. Minos prayed to Poseidon

Poseidon

In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the god of the sea and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes. The name of the god Nethuns in Etruscan mythology was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon....
to send him a snow-white bull, as a sign of approval. He was to sacrifice the bull in honor of Poseidon but decided to keep it instead because of its beauty. To punish Minos, Poseidon caused Pasiphaë

Pasiphaë

In Greek mythology, Pasipha? , "wide-shining" was the daughter of Helios, the Sun, by the eldest of the Oceanids, Perse; Like her doublet Europa, her origins were in the East, in her case at Colchis, the palace of the Sun; she was given in marriage to King Minos of Crete....
, Minos' wife, to fall madly in love with the bull from the sea, the Cretan Bull

Cretan Bull

In Greek mythology, the Cretan Bull was either the bull that carried away Europa or the bull Pasipha? fell in love with, giving birth to the Minotaur....
. She had Daedalus, the famous architect, make a wooden cow for her. Pasiphaë climbed into the decoy in order to copulate with the white bull. The offspring of their coupling was a monster called the Minotaur.

Nowhere has the essence of the myth been expressed more succinctly than in the Heroides
Heroides

The Heroides ' , or Epistulae Heroidum , are a collection of fifteen wiktionary:epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets, and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek mythology and Roman mythology, in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated,...
attributed to Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
, where Pasiphaë's daughter complains of the curse of her unrequited love: "the bull's form disguised the god, Pasiphaë, my mother, a victim of the deluded bull, brought forth in travail her reproach and burden." Literalist and prurient readings that emphasize the machinery of literal copulation may intentionally obscure the mystic marriage

Mystical marriage

Mystical marriage is a term equating the intimacy of a mystical relationship, as between a Christian mystic and God, with the natural intimacy between marital partners....
of the god in bull form, a Minoan mythos alien to the Greeks.

The Minotaur, as the Greeks

Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
imagined him, had the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull. Pasiphaë nursed him in his infancy, but he grew and became ferocious. Minos, after getting advice from the Oracle at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is an archaeology site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis. Delphi was the site of the Pythia, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, when it was a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python , a deity who lived there and protecte...
, had Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth to hold the Minotaur. Its location was near Minos' palace in Knossos.

Tribute price that brought Theseus

Androgeus

In Greek mythology, Androgeus was the father of Sthenelus and a son of Minos and Pasipha?. Aegeus, King of Athens, killed Androgeus because he won every prize during a feast....
, son of Minos, had been killed by the Athenians

Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
, who were jealous of the victories he had won at the Panathenaic festival

Panathenaic Games

The Panathenaic Games were a set of games held every four years in Athens in Ancient Greece.The games were actually part of a much larger religious festival, the Panathenaia, which was held every year....
. Others say he was killed at Marathon

Marathon, Greece

Marathon is an ancient Greek city-state, a contemporary town in Greece, the site of the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, in which the heavily outnumbered Athens army defeated the Persian Empirens....
by the Cretan bull

Cretan Bull

In Greek mythology, the Cretan Bull was either the bull that carried away Europa or the bull Pasipha? fell in love with, giving birth to the Minotaur....
, his mother's former taurine lover, which Aegeus

Aegeus

In Greek mythology, Aegeus , also Aigeus, Aegeas or Aigeas, was an archaic figure in the founding myth of Athens. The "goat-man" who gave his name to the Aegean Sea was, next to Poseidon, the father of Theseus, the founder of Athenian institutions and one of the kings of Athens....
, king of Athens, had commanded him to slay. The common tradition is that Minos waged war to avenge the death of his son, and won. Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His work remains widely studied, and continues to influence poetry and other forms of art....
, in his account of the Minotaur's birth, refers to another version in which Athens was "compelled by the cruel plague to pay penalties for the killing of Androgeos." Aegeus must avert the plague caused by his crime by sending "young men at the same time as the best of unwed girls as a feast" to the Minotaur. Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, drawn by lots, be sent every ninth year (some accounts say every year) to be devoured by the Minotaur.

When the third sacrifice approached, Theseus

Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was a legendary king of Athens, son of Aethra , and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, with whom Aethra lay in one night....
volunteered to slay the monster. He promised to his father, Aegeus, that he would put up a white sail on his journey back home if he was successful and would have the crew put up black sails if he was killed. In Crete, Ariadne

Ariadne

Ariadne, in Greek mythology , was daughter of Monarch Minos of Crete and his queen, Pasipha?, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and later became the bride of the god Dionysus....
, the daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and helped him navigate the labyrinth, which had a single path to the center. In most accounts she gave him a ball of thread, allowing him to retrace his path. Theseus killed the Minotaur with the sword of Aegeus and led the other Athenians back out of the labyrinth. But he forgot to put up the white sail, so when his father saw the ship he presumed Theseus was dead and threw himself into the sea, thus committing suicide.

Etruscan view

This essentially Athenian view of the Minotaur as the antagonist of Theseus, reflects the literary sources, which are biased in favour of Athenian perspectives. The Etruscans, who paired Ariadne with Dionysus, never with Theseus, offered an alternative Etruscan view of the Minotaur, never seen in Greek arts: on an Etruscan red-figure wine-cup of the early-to-mid fourth century Pasiphaë tenderly dandles an infant Minotaur on her knee.

Interpretations

The contest between Theseus and the Minotaur was frequently represented in Greek art

Greek art

Greece has a rich and varied artistic history spanning some 5000 years. It began in the Cycladic and Minoan civilization prehistorical civilization, and gave birth to Classicism in the ancient period ....
. A Knossian didrachm

Greek drachma

Drachma, pl. drachmas or drachmae is the name of:#An ancient currency unit found in many Greek city states and successor states, and in many South-West Asian kingdoms of the Hellenistic era....
exhibits on one side the labyrinth, on the other the Minotaur surrounded by a semicircle of small balls, probably intended for stars; one of the monster's names was Asterion

Asterion

In Greek mythology, Asterion denotes two sacred kings of Crete. The first Asterion or Asterius , son of Neleus and Chloris by the Greeks called "king" of Crete, was the consort of Europa and stepfather of her sons by Zeus, who had to assume the form of the Bull to accomplish his role....
("star").

The ruins of Minos' palace at Knossos have been found, but the labyrinth has not. The enormous number of rooms, staircases and corridors in the palace has led archaeologists to believe that the palace itself was the source of the labyrinth myth. Homer, describing the shield of Achilles

Shield of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles is the shield that Achilles uses to fight Hector, famously described in a passage in Book 18, lines 478-608 of Homer's Iliad....
, remarked that the labyrinth was Ariadne's ceremonial dancing ground.

Some modern mythologists regard the Minotaur as a solar personification and a Minoan adaptation of the Baal

Baal

Ba'al is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant, cognate to East Semitic Bel ....
-Moloch

Moloch

Moloch, Molech, Molekh, or Molek, representing semitic ??? mlk, is either the name of a deity or the name of a particular kind of human sacrifice associated with fire....
of the Phoenicia

Phoenicia

Phoenicia was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal regions of modern day Lebanon, extending to parts of Israel, Syria and the Palestinian territories....
ns. The slaying of the Minotaur by Theseus in that case indicates the breaking of Athenian tributary relations with Minoan Crete

Minoan civilization

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization which arose on the island of Crete. The Minoan culture flourished from approximately 27th century BC to 1450 BC; afterwards, Mycenaean Greece culture became dominant at Minoan sites in Crete....
.

According to A. B. Cook

Arthur Bernard Cook

Arthur Bernard Cook was a British classical scholar, known for work in archaeology and the history of religions. He is best known for his three-part work Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion....
, Minos and Minotaur are only different forms of the same personage, representing the sun-god

Solar deity

A Solar Deity , is a deity who represents the sun, or an aspect of it. People have worshiped these for all of recorded history. Hence, many beliefs have formed around this worship, such as the "missing sun" found in many cultures ....
of the Cretans, who depicted the sun as a bull. He and J. G. Frazer both explain Pasiphae's union with the bull as a sacred ceremony, at which the queen of Knossos was wedded to a bull-formed god, just as the wife of the Tyrant

Tyrant

This article is about the political ruler. For other uses see Tyrant and Tyranny In modern usage, a tyrant is a single ruler holding absolute political power over a state or within an organization....
in Athens was wedded to Dionysus

Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
. E. Pottier, who does not dispute the historical personality of Minos, in view of the story of Phalaris

Phalaris

Phalaris was the tyrant of Acragas in Sicily, from approximately 570 to 554 BC.File:Pierre Woeiriot Phalaris.jpg...
, considers it probable that in Crete (where a bull-cult may have existed by the side of that of the labrys

Labrys

Labrys is the term for a symmetrical doubleheaded axe, known to the Classical Greeks as pelekus or sagaris, and to the Romans as a bipennis....
) victims were tortured by being shut up in the belly of a red-hot brazen bull

Brazen bull

The Bronze Bull, Brazen Bull, or the Sicilian Bull, is an execution/torture device designed in ancient Greece.Perillos of Athens, a brass-founder, proposed to Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily, the invention of a new means for executing criminals; accordingly, he cast a Cattle, made entirely of brass, hollow, with a door...
. The story of Talos

Talos

In the Cretan tales incorporated into Greek mythology, T?los or T?lon was a giant man of bronze who protected Europa in Crete, circling the island's shores three times daily while guarding it....
, the Cretan man of brass

Brass

Brass is any alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties. In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin....
, who heated himself red-hot and clasped strangers in his embrace as soon as they landed on the island, is probably of similar origin.

A historical explanation of the myth refers to the time when Crete was the main political and cultural potency in the Aegean Sea. As the fledgling Athens (and probably other continental Greek cities) was under tribute to Crete, it can be assumed that such tribute included young men and women for sacrifice. This ceremony was performed by a priest disguised with a bull head or mask, thus explaining the imagery of the Minotaur. It may also be that this priest was son to Minos.

Once continental Greece was free from Crete's dominance, the myth of the Minotaur worked to distance the forming religious consciousness of the Hellene poleis
Polis

A polis -- plural: poleis --is a city, a city-state and also citizenship and body of citizens. When used to describe Classical Athens and its contemporaries, polis is often translated as "city-state."...
from Minoan beliefs.

Minotaur

Birth and appearance

Tribute price that brought Theseus

Etruscan view

Interpretations

See also