page_title: Knossos
section_title: Legends
hierarchical_section_title: Knossos / Legends
context_page_description: Knossos is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and has been called Europe's oldest city.
  Settled as early as the Neolithic period, the name Knossos survives from ancient Greek references to the major city of Crete. The palace of Knossos eventually became the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. The palace was abandoned at some unknown time at the end of the Late Bronze Age, c. 1,380–1,100 BC. The reason why is unknown, but one of the many disasters that befell the palace is generally put forward.
  In the First Palace Period, the urban area reached a size of as many as 18,000 people. In its peak, the palace and surrounding city boasted a population of 100,000 people shortly after 1,700 BC.
context_section_description: In Greek mythology, King Minos dwelt in a palace at Knossos. He had Daedalus construct a labyrinth, a very large maze (by some connected with the double-bladed axe, or labrys) in which to retain his son, the Minotaur. Daedalus also built a dancing floor for Queen Ariadne. The name "Knossos" was subsequently adopted by Arthur Evans.
  As far as is currently known, it was William Stillman, the American consul who published Kalokairinos' discoveries, who, seeing the sign of the double axe on the massive walls partly uncovered by Kalokairinos, first associated the complex with the labyrinth of legend, calling the ruins "labyrinthine". Evans agreed with Stillman. The myth of the Minotaur tells that Theseus, a prince from Athens, whose father is an ancient Greek king named Aegeus, the basis for the name of the Greek sea (the Aegean Sea), sailed to Crete, where he was forced to fight a terrible creature called the Minotaur. The Minotaur was a half man, half bull, and was kept in the Labyrinth – a building like a maze – by King Minos, the ruler of Crete. The king's daughter, Ariadne, fell in love with Theseus. Before he entered the Labyrinth to fight the Minotaur, Ariadne gave him a ball of thread which he unwound as he went into the Labyrinth so that he could find his way back by following it. Theseus killed the Minotaur, and then he and Ariadne fled from Crete, escaping her angry father.
  As it turns out, there probably was an association of the word labyrinth, whatever its etymology, with ancient Crete. The sign of the double axe was used throughout the Mycenaean world as an apotropaic mark: its presence on an object would prevent it from being "killed". Axes were scratched on many of the stones of the palace. It appears in pottery decoration and is a motif of the Shrine of the Double Axes at the palace, as well as of many shrines throughout Crete and the Aegean. And finally, it appears in Linear B on Knossos Tablet Gg702 as da-pu₂-ri-to-jo po-ti-ni-ja, which probably represents the Mycenaean Greek, Daburinthoio potniai, "to the mistress of the Labyrinth," recording the distribution of one jar of honey. A credible theory uniting all the evidence has yet to be formulated.
caption: A labrys from Messara Plain
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