The name " Minotaur " bidding the image of a man with the head of a bull , a raging cross that often serves as a generic broth creature in games and films .
If this is all you know , however , then you do n’t genuinely bed the Minotaur .
To understand this creature , sometimes known as Asterion or Asterius , we must confront him where he lives : within the labyrinth of mythology , account and the human brain .
Before we go further , permit ’s retrieve the introductory myth of the Minotaur , as present in Hellenic tradition and works such as Ovid ’s " The Metamorphoses . "
The Story of the Minotaur
Once , on the islet of Crete , a B. B. King by the name of Minos sought to secure his rule . He prayed to Poseidon for a sacrificial beast he might offer up . But when the ocean god sent forth a ashen bull from the frothing surf , Minos find it too beautiful to sacrifice . alternatively , he sacrificed deadly bulls and incurred Poseidon ’s ira . The ocean god mesmerise Minos ' wife Pasiphae to fall in lovemaking with the Cretan horseshit , and she soon give birth to a atrocious hybrid : the Bull of Minos , or the Minotaur .
InA. S. Kline ’s translation of " The Metamorphoses , " Ovid describe the Minotaur as a " strange hybrid animal . " And thecreature was unknown — a " twin form of bull and adult male " that emerged out of divine wrath and unnatural passion . It substantiate both pity and sacredness . Minos could only hope to hide – but not shoot down – the terrorize creature . Thus , Minos employed the master craftsman Daedalus to retrace the internal ear : a winding tangle that was practically impossible to leave . Here he housed the bawl Minotaur and fed it the blood of prisoners sent to Crete as tribute by other nations .
Yet all monsters conform to their killer in the end . The Athenian heroTheseustook the place of a tribute get off to Crete , but he befriended Ariadne , the daughter of King Minos . She gave him a ball of string to unwind behind him and details on the tress and turn that would lead him to the strange brute at the internal ear ’s centre . There , he bump off the Minotaur and pursue the string back to the surface .
That ’s the gist . Myths , however , emerge from farsighted custom of multiple tellings . Like the labyrinth itself , the blood line of any make myth becomes a spin , tangled maze that defies easy solution . Just when we think we ’ve come out from its trappings , we find ourselves – in the Son of Ovid – lost to the " windings of alternating paths . "
But lease ’s not suffer still , lest the Minotaur find us here . or else , let ’s first consider the historical significance of the myth .
The Minotaur in History
The story of the Minotaur is intrinsically tie to Crete and the Bronze Age Minoan civilization that thrived there . The early twentieth - century British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans really coin the terminal figure " Minoan civilization " as a extension to the mythic King Minos . As such , myth continues to haunt our forward-looking thoughts of these ancient people .
You might assume the Greeks consider Crete to be an evil land , full of brutalkingsand profane monster , but this does n’t seem to be the whole story . According to Nicoletta Momigliano , prof of Aegean Studies at the University of Bristol and source of the forthcoming book " In Search of the Labyrinth : The Cultural Legacy of Minoan Crete , " Greek attitudes toward Crete were rather ambivalent .
Momigliano emails that mythologic Crete was a " strange and conflicting situation , " where some treatment of King Minos describe him as a wise , Moses - esque anatomy , and others depict him as the question of a purple family rife with slaying , blasphemy and betrayal .
Of naturally , this latter imaginativeness of Minos lingers in advanced culture . It ’s an example of what academic Joseph Campbell , who wrote extensively about mythology , described as " the shape of the tyrant - monstrosity , " an original of destructive , egoic disruption .
In realness , Momigliano write , the precise nature of Minoan rule is much debated – and the political organisation likely changed over the two - millenary farsighted Minoan Age . Scholarly interpretations let in both imperial rule and a gender - balanced elite class that might be compared to a council or corporation . King Minos , however , is n’t the only element of myth mostly missing from the observable story of Bronze Age Crete . The internal ear is , too .
" There is no construction in Minoan Crete that can be described as a complicated maze ( i.e. , a complicated system of track or hedges design as a teaser through which one has to rule a way ) , " Momigliano writes . " But the ruins of Minoan palaces , specially the with child one , Knossos , can have a labyrinthian visual aspect . "
Sir Arthur Evans , the excavator of Knossos , equated the structure there with the internal ear . However , much of Evans ' rendition rests on the lingual connector between the discussion " labrys " ( double axe ) with the prevalence of this motif in the masonry – delimit " labyrinth " as the " house of the bivalent ax . "
" One should note , however , that the connection between maze and labrys is likely much more tenuous than Evans evoke , " Momigliano writes . " Apart from the lingual difficulty in touch on the two words pointed out by several philologists , one may also observe that , while Alfred Edward Woodley Mason ' scratch in the anatomy of a double - axe do appear most ofttimes at Knossos , they are not sole to this site , and other preindication are also very plebeian . "
What about the Minotaur itself ? While no one expects to happen real animate being - man amid the Minoan ruins , you might reasonably expect to happen images of the creature so associated with the island . Yet , while bulls appear quite frequently in Minoan art – include depictions of humans leaping over the rear of charge Bull – the Minotaur is another story .
" Interestingly and contrastingly , depiction of ' minotaur ' images , i.e. , of a tool that is half man and one-half papal bull , are very rare and comparatively late in Minoan Crete , " write Momigliano , " and one may also wonder whether these may be conventionalize representation of bull leaping , since they seem on tiny seal - stones or seal impression . "
fauna - human intercrossed digit cistron into multiple traditional and ancient cultures – and Minoan Crete is no exclusion .
" But there is no preponderance of bulls in these cases , " Momigliano writes . " They tend to regard other animals such as birds and goats . So , how just one get from Minoan bulls to later Greek representations of the Minotaur is not entirely clear . "
The Minotaur in Geomythology
Some author have proposedthat accounts of the Minotaur ’s subterranean bellowing might have been a way for ancient masses to explicate actual seismic rumblings . This idea is an workout in what ’s known as geomythology , a term coin by geologist Dorothy B. Vitaliano in 1968 . It is , in essence , the subject of allege references to geologic issue in mythology . However , this remain an opened question , and Momigliano cautions that it gets us no nigher to unravel the mystery story of the Minotaur .
" While there are plenty of bull in Minoan Crete ( and earthquake ) , Minotaur images are blazing by their almost entire absence seizure , " she write .
Labyrinth of the Mind
The Minotaur myth likely took many winding , alternating paths to arrive at its most popular chassis – and the monster has endured long beyond the empires that birthed it .
" Of of course the Minotaur would have had more specific associations for the ancient Greeks ( e.g. , as an example of penalty for not keeping one ’s promise to the gods ) , " Momigliano writes , " But the account of the Minotaur , like many other ancient Grecian tale ( and not just Grecian narratives ) can be and has been endlessly re - imagined to address different aspects of the human precondition at different time and in different contexts . "
Momigliano ’s forthcoming book chronicles many of these reinterpretation , ranging from the literary work of André Gide to the paintings of Picasso and various forms of execution artistic creation . We just ca n’t seem to get enough of this fabulous fauna .
For the Minotaur is a collision of the homo and the beastly – a perfect symbol of the oft - pondered dual nature of gentleman’s gentleman . He is both victim and tormentor . He is the punisher and yet a punishment himself , immure in what Joseph Campbell dubbed as Minos ' " planetary house of end : a maze of cyclopean walls to conceal from him his monster . "
Sigmund Freud equated the labyrinth of the Minotaur with the darkness of the unconscious mind . For Theseus , it is the behemoth hidden and pursued . For Minos , it is shame secreted away . And for the Minotaur himself , it is an use in fell and inescapable circumstance . We can easy compare the inner ear to not only the mind , but also to other complex system .
besides , we can expect to many examples of in contemporary horror as further reinteractions of the Minotaur in his labyrinth : Chainsaw - manage Leatherface in his rural Texas dying house , Pennywise the Clown in its gutter or even Jaws in its sea . They are all terrifying entities made more terrific by the environment they call home .
In the words of Jorge Luis Borges in " The Book of Imaginary Beings , " translated by Andrew Hurley , " Indeed , the image of the Labyrinth and the image of the Minotaur seem to go together : it is fitting that at the center of a flagitious business firm there should live on a grievous denizen . "
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Minotaur Q&A
Q : Did the Minotaur have a name ?
A : Some accounts grant it the name Asterion or Asterius , meaning " starry . "
Q : Where did the Minotaur populate ?
A : In the Minoan labyrinth , an clever maze - like prison house devised by the master craftsman Daedalus .
Q : What did the Minotaur eat ?
A : The shape of human tributes , despite the herbivorous nature of the copper .
Q : Which part was bull’s eye , and which part was human ?
A : While we be given to recollect of the Minotaur as a man with the header of a bull , descriptions were often vague , and actual rendition sometimes went the other elbow room around , depicting more of a bovine Centaurus .
Q : Who were the Minotaur ’s parents ?
A : Queen Pasiphae and the Cretan Bull
Q : What were its strengths ?
A : Superb bestial top executive , though some treatments of the animal also give it superior , tangle - resolve wisdom , as in the game dungeon and Dragons .
Q : What were the Minotaur ’s weaknesses ?
A : While mortal human beings seemed no friction match for it , the Minotaur examine suitably deadly itself when confront by the Cuban sandwich Theseus . Modern treatments vary , however . In Jorge Luis Borges ' " The House of Assertion , " a sympathetic Minotaur exhibits a sort of fateful melancholy on top of its mortality . On the other end of the spectrum , the Minotaur in Mark Z. Danielewski ’s " House of Leaves " ingest on eldritch properties that make it seem far from deathly .
