Some bull in this story

Crete

Today's itinerary

• Wake up late
• Walk the old town of Crete
• Knossos - the old capital of Crete, home of the excavated Minoan ruins
• Run with Ree along the wall of the ancient Venetian fort (fort is ancient, the Venetians weren't but I guess are now?)
• First episode of "Europe Trip Panic" as ferry to Santorini we are taking on Sunday only leaves on Sunday week - stuck on Crete?
• Laundromat washes, dries, and folds all of our dirty clothes for $6 dollars. Woooooooo.

The day
Drew (Mr 6am - "time for everyone to get up" guy) woke after 9 O'Clock; miracle! He was cross because the door to the bathroom was shut and bleary eyed, he strolled right into it. Not one to admit personal liability, blame was cast at the feet of his devoted parents who lost the trial by judge without jury (Judge of course was Drew).

Sweet toothbrush holders

The old town of Crete was pretty cool really. The Greeks have a great way of being warm without being smarmy. Kids had a ball checking out souvenirs, nuts, snails for sale, mega strawberries and the list goes on.

Classic combo of spices and sharp knives

Gourds -ask Zoe

Tourists in a tourist trap

Ex-bunny

What's in the bags?

Snails baby, snails by the bag. Who could possibly resist?

Need a good takasubo?

Cabs at the entrance to the spice mall - do not turn left

Knossos
Today's story is really that of the Minotaur and of our trip to Knossos. Have had a thing for the story ever since I got a book for a birthday present that was nothing to do with the Minotaur, but which, for reasons only Grant can tell, included a detailed handwritten story of the myth on the inside cover.

The story goes that the Minoan King Minos (not Midas of the golden touch (although they were related)) received a bull from Poseidon. So far so good although a tad weird for a God of the sea to decide to give a bull as a bit of a pressie.

Minos was supposed to slaughter the bull but didn't (probably coz he couldn't catch it - later became one of Hercules 12 impossible tasks to catch it - he did.....which to my mind makes it a difficult but not impossible task....need to write those Greek mythologers an enquiring letter!).

Anyways, Poseidon gets shitty coz Minos doesn't slaughter the bull and for reasons only a sea God could fathom, arranges for the wife of the grandson of Minos ..........a few moments to get the family tree clear in your head........(confusingly also called Minos- the grandson not the wife) to give birth to a half man half bull aka "the Minotaur". I mean, what the?!?

For reasons even more obscure, Minos the grandson, gets his resident smart guy Daedelus (known to me, Grant and Percy Jackson as "dee-da-lus" but to the Greeks as "day-da-loss") to build a Labyrinth to house the poor fella / bovine / Minotaur within. They then don't feed him and over time begin to send young Athenians into the Labyrinth where they would be killed by the Minotaur (who gets a bit of a bad wrap I feel - hungry, caged and attacked, he fights back). The Athenians, were not volunteers but ratehr given over to Minos by the rulers of Athens so the Cretans wouldn't attack the Athenians.

Parenthetically, there is lot of confusion by those who get confused by these things, as to the definition of labyrinth vs maze. First off the "Labyrinth" capital L refers to the specific Labyrinth of Minos. A labyrinth (little l) is defined as a single passage albeit complicated. A maze has multiple passages, turn offs, dead ends etc. Having read a bit about this today, I believe that you, dear reader, should not be the slightest bit phased if you mix the terms - turns out even the Oxford dictionary does, much to the chagrin of many a labyrinth boffin.

Parenthetically again, Daedelus is the father of Icarus, you know the guy who flew too close to the sun and melted the wax that held his wings together (daddy Daedelus had a invented the wings and had a relatively big guilt complex after they failed in their big test).


A few pics to set the scene

Zeus (raised in a Cretan cave, goes and steals some gal whilst dressed as a bull (I know). They have a child called Minos. This act of abduction which should be, at the least, frowned upon, is now immortalized on the Greek version of the 2 Euro coin. Go figure!

Front wall of the excavated ruins of Chez Minos

Bull horns - at least 4000 yrs old

As fancy houses now have tennis courts, so the Palace of Minos had .......a bull fighting arena. Story goes that Minoan acrobats would await the charging bull and then as it dipped its horns, grab them, somersault onto the back of the charging bull and then push off in another somersault (see pic below).

Cirque d'soleil of Minoan civilization

No comment!

Minos also used of bring in 14 young Athenians every 7 years to fight the bulls. They didn't do as well as the aforementioned acrobats and pretty much got gored to death. (Nb "bring in" = abduct or coerce Athenians to send then or else face attack!).

Eventually Theseus (one of the abducted Athenians) gets some help from the daughter of Minos and comes up with the genius idea of using string to help him find his way out of the Labyrinth. It's seems a relatively simple thought, at least in retrospect.

BUT I don't really get it. If it really was a Labyrinth and not a maze, there is only one way out, perhaps circuitous and convoluted but only one. So why not just turn around and walk out? Otherwise is should be the Maze of the Minotaur. Sigh, another letter of enquiry to mythologers is on its way.

So was there really a Labyrinth?
The myth of young Athenians fighting a bull like monster thingy probably comes from the stories of poor young Athenians sent to "the ring" to fight the bull and .....to die.

OK so so far we have a bull killing Athenians.


The palace of the Minoans was huge - more than 22000 square meters with at least 3 floors plus basement levels. There were more than 500 rooms and the architecture was of a complexity not seen before on the planet

One floor of the complex "labyrinthine" palace of Minos

Here's the next part - I know it's been a long time coming but it's a cracker. The symbol of the Minoan deity was a double headed axe which in Greek is a Lav-ris. The home (thos in Greek) of the double headed axe became the Lavirinthos" which over time became Labyrinth.

So putting it all together is a 1,2,3. Take an extraordinarily architecturally complex, maze like palatial structure, called Lavrinthos with a bull fighting ring where Athenians died at the horns of a crazed bull......and you get the legend of the Minotaur. I think that's cool as you can no doubt surmise by the stupid length of this post.


Finally for this story I post the picture below of the excavated ruins. The area in the top left is the bull ring aka the real Labyrinth. We stood in it today. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine the Minotaur. Then Drew and I played imaginary bullfighting which kind killed the moment but was a lot of fun.

The bull arena - top left

Other cool Knossos things
On the North side is a paved path that was once a road. Turns out it is the oldest road in the world (or was that Europe)?

Look before you cross the road

On the road

Also, King Minos had a pretty fine legal system (although it was still good to be the king). He became known as the first Judge (remember this is all at least 2500BC). When he died it is said he was sent to the underworld to judge all who entered. A copy of his throne (see pic below) resides at the international law courts in The Hague.

The throne

Love the Atrion Hotel

Follow the sign to our hotel

iPhone panorama...turn right to get to our hotel

But what bout the ferry that we need to take on Sunday that doesn't run till 10 days time? OK nobody in their right minds would still be reading so that's a story for another day.

Did I mention we stood in the Labyrinth?



Enough