likeafieldmouse: King Minos’s Labyrinth "In Greek mythology,...
"In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth (Greek λαβύρινθος labyrinthos) was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at the palace Knossos.
Its function was to hold Minos’s son, Minotaur, a mythical creature that was half man and half bull.
Daedalus had so cunningly made the Labyrinth that he could barely escape it after he built it.
Every nine years, Minos made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus’s creation, the Labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur.
After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld. The Minoan civilization of Crete has been named after him by the archaeologist Arthur Evans.
In colloquial English, labyrinth is generally synonymous with maze, but many contemporary scholars observe a distinction between the two: maze refers to a complex branching (multicursal) puzzle with choices of path and direction; while a single-path (unicursal) labyrinth has only a single, non-branching path, which leads to the center. A labyrinth in this sense has an unambiguous route to the center and back and is not designed to be difficult to navigate.”
