When talking about the labyrinth, the most common concept is that of the famous palace from Knossos belonging to king Minos of Crete, built by the legendary Daedalus, who escaped from captivity together with his son Icarus by making themselves wax wings.
Archaeologists named the palace "labyrinth" because the building had 1,500 rooms connected through twisted corridors, contorted stairs, fake outdoors and reception halls, where the visitor could get lost easily.
In fact, the archaeologists are not absolutely sure that the mythological labyrinth would be the Knossos palace.
Minos's palace emerged from a nucleus (the yard and royal rooms) to which added other outhouses that
spread over some few hectares and rose on 4-5 levels, like a hive. 90 such city-fortresses existed on the Crete Island (southern Greece).
The labyrinth-palace of Knossos had a central court (where Minoic festivities occurred, including bull fights that generated the legend of the Minotaur, the human flesh eating monster half bull-half man, killed by the hero Theseus), but also tens of smaller courts.
The roofs were flat, like in modern blocks, but had inner drains through which the rainfall was amassed in cistern-basins, as Crete has a dry clime, and it rains only during the autumn and winter.
The concern for hygiene was amazing. In the ancient palace there was current water and drainage.
In the courts of Knossos also existed gushers, what means that 4,000 years ago those people already knew the principles of the communicating vessels.
Moreover, in the palace-labyrinth also existed … elevators!
They were, of course, operated by people, with the help of the winches.
The minoic people used columns for sustaining the ceiling of the larger halls.
But curiously, the Cretan columns were thicker in the upper part and slimmer in the lower part, giving the impression of an upside down view.
The walls of the labyrinth-palace are painted in vivid colors, like blue, depicting dolphins, but also human bodies and weaponry. It's amazing how the paint resisted over the millennia.
The labyrinth employs just simple geometrical forms: circles, squares, rectangles and right angles, without steeples, arches or vaults.
Few know that, apart form the Greek labyrinth, there is an ancient Egyptian labyrinth: the mortuary temple of the pharaoh Amenemhet III (1860-1814 BC) at Hawara, near Fayum.
This labyrinth had 12 covered courts, and two levels, each with …1,500 rooms and a sole entrance.
To get out you had to return to the entrance from the labyrinth of rooms. But the building has configured tens of fake bricked exits.
As ancient Crete and Egypt were connected by trade, maybe the Cretans borrowed it from the Egyptians.
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