The Minoan Labyrinth

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey immerses players in the mythology of Ancient Greece. In particular, they can walk in the footsteps of Theseus through the Labyrinth and come face to face with the mythical Minotaur. Commonly associated with the maze-like Knossos palace on Crete, how much of the myth is rooted in reality? Prof Nicoletta Momigliano guides Tristan Hughes through the pathways between myth and reality of the Minoan Labyrinth. Echoes of History is a Ubisoft podcast, brought to you by History Hit. Listen to it here https://podfollow.com/echoes-of-history/view. Hosted by: Tristan Hughes Edited by: Alex Jones and Aidan Lonergan Produced by: Robin McConnell, Anne-Marie Luff Senior Producer: Anne-Marie Luff Production Manager: Beth Donaldson Executive Producers: Etienne Bouvier, Julien Fabre, Steve Lanham, Jen Bennett Music: Phoibe the Orphan by The Flight, Michael Georgiades The Minotaur by The Flight Barnabas by The Flight, Michael Georgiades If you liked this podcast please subscribe, share, rate & review. Take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. Tell us your favourite Assassin's Creed game or podcast episode at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 1:02Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.O.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.O.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at WhatTheFactPod.

• 2:16Tristan Hughes?

  Hello, I hope you're doing well and I wish you a very merry Christmas. I hope you're having a wonderful time over this festive break. Now, I am a hard boss. I work the Ancients team very hard, but even I have a heart, even I do. And so, over this Christmas break, I've been very, very generous and I've given them some time off to enjoy the festive period with their loved ones, to have a bit of time away from listening to my voice droning on day after day on the Ancients. What better job could there be? But more seriously, the Ancients team have been doing an absolutely fantastic job over the 2025, as they always have. And so, over the festive period, we are releasing a series of episodes from our

• 3:01Tristan Hughes?

  archive, really fun episodes that we want to share with you. Today, this episode actually comes from a sister podcast of the history hit stable, Echoes of History, which explores the history and archaeology behind various Assassin's Creed games, including Assassin's Creed Odyssey. In Assassin's Creed Odyssey, they explore the story of the Minotaur and the labyrinth, the Minoan labyrinth. But what do we actually know about this? Well, we're delving deep into that today. Is the Minoan labyrinth, is it completely mythological, aligning with Theseus and the Minotaur and the like? Or could there be an archaeological

• 3:43Tristan Hughes?

  basis to this great maze beneath the Minnoan palace at Knossos? Well, you're going to hear all about that today, because our guest is the wonderful and leading Minnoan expert, Professor Nico Migliano. Now, Nico, she's been on the Ancients podcast a few times before. She did The Rise of the Minnoans earlier this year, and no doubt will do more Minnoan episodes with Nico in the future. She's brilliant, she's fantastic, she's so warm and lovely. I think that's enough for me. Let's get into Nico, talking all things the Minnoan labyrinth. Was it real? Is there any historical basis for it at all? Let's go.

• 4:26Tristan Hughes?

  Welcome to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes. Today, we're travelling to Crete, and the home of the mythical Minotaur in the labyrinth. But was it really a myth?

• 4:45Tristan Hughes?

  The air is thick with the scent of damp stone and decay, as you press deeper into the labyrinth's winding corridors. Shadows dance on the walls, cast by the flickering torchlight, and every step echoes in the oppressive tunnels. The labyrinth groans around you, a low, guttural hum vibrating through ancient stones slick with moss and blood. Your sandals scrape against grit-streaked tiles, as the Minotaur's snorts echo ahead, wet and ragged, like a beast chewing bone. Somewhere in the choking darkness, iron chains clank against rock, and you freeze. Is that his breath, or the wind?

• 5:30Tristan Hughes?

  The thread, a glimmering lifeline, guides you forward, its pale glow a fragile beacon against the overwhelming darkness. Your heart pounds as you hear distant growls reverberating through the maze, each one sharper and closer than the last. Suddenly, a roar splits the air, half-human, half-bellow. The walls seem to pulse as you clutch Ariadne's thread, its glow barely piercing the gloom where shadows writhe, like living things. Somewhere in this maze of teeth and stone, the Minotaur waits, his hooves pounding a war drum rhythm. The cracked walls seem to close in, their ancient carvings whispering secrets of those

• 6:14Tristan Hughes?

  who failed before you. Somewhere within, the Minotaur waits, a creature of rage and legend, and you know, there's no turning back.

• 6:31Tristan Hughes?

  To guide us through the labyrinth and unravel the myth from reality, I'm joined by Professor Nicoletta Momigliano from the University of Bristol. Nico is the author of Insert the Labyrinth: The Cultural Legacy of Minoan Crete. Her latest book, Aegeomania: Modern Reimaginings of the Aegean Bronze Age, is available now. Nico, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast. It is great to see you again.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Thank you for inviting me and it's a great pleasure to be here again discussing things Minoan with you.

• 7:03Tristan Hughes?

  Discussing things Minoan and the Minoan labyrinth and the Minotaur, sorting facts from fiction. Now, in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Nico, one of the missions that you can do, it is set at the time of the Peloponnesian War, but you can go to Knossos and you can go to the labyrinth and fight the Minotaur. Now, no such thing is a silly question first of all. Can you first of all give us an overview of what is the Minotaur and the labyrinth associated with Knossos?

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Well, the Minotaur is literally the bull of Minos, of King Minos. It's a mythological character. I don't think there was ever a bull of King Minos and certainly I don't think there was ever a real being that had the body of a man and the head of a bull. And that was the offspring of King Minos's wife, Pazifa, who had developed a passion for a bull and had sex with a bull,

• 8:15Speaker 04

  not using contraceptives and getting pregnant. And then producing this offspring, this being that was half bull, half human. But ended up being called the Minotaur after King Minos, that was after all only his stepfather.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  And it's a figure that emerges from Greek mythology, where we are told the story of this passion by Pasiphae for this beautiful bull that had been sent by a god, Poseidon, and that King Minos was supposed to sacrifice. But he thought the bull was so beautiful that he didn't want to sacrifice it and sacrificed another bull instead. And this is something really stupid. This is something that you find in Greek mythology a lot. Mortals make promises to Greek gods, and they never learn. If you make a promise to a Greek god, you should keep that promise,

• 9:21Speaker 04

  because otherwise you are punished. So King Minos has these beautiful bulls sent by Poseidon. He promises to sacrifice. He doesn't sacrifice it. Then the gods, because they are Greek gods, so a bit unfair, and they take it on his wife. And this is the story of the Minotaur.

• 9:45Tristan Hughes?

  That's the story, isn't it? And it is one of the most bizarre conception stories of Greek mythology, and that is saying something in its own right, given certain Greek myths. Do we know how old this myth is, Nico? I know that there's always the saying that there's never one overarching version of a myth, because certain aspects of myths change over time. But the origins of the Minotaur myth, I mean, do they go back 3,000 years to the Bronze Age? Do we know much about that?

• 10:14Speaker 04

  I personally think not. You are absolutely right. In Greek mythology, you only have bits and pieces here and there. And it's only relatively late that you actually get the full story. After the classical period, there are people that write... Compendia, you know, summaries of Greek mythology that tell you the full story. Uh, so there are bits that tell you the full story of exactly where King Minos comes from, who he marries, and the story of his really dysfunctional family. There are things, but they are very late.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Elements of the story, elements of King Minos, another character in the story who is his daughter Ariadne, who supposedly falls in love with the Athenian hero Theseus, who is the guy who slaughters the Minotaur. Elements of this go back, well, at least to Homer, to the Homeric poems, to the Iliad and the Odyssey. But how far back into the Bronze Age, that is a different matter. When we are talking of Minoan civilization, this wonderful culture found on Crete by various archaeologists like Sir Arthur Evans,

• 11:41Speaker 04

  a civilization that lasts from, let's say, 3,000 to about 1,000 B.C. Well, we don't have written evidence. We only have iconographic evidence. And it may be surprising for people to learn that in Minoan iconography, in the images that we get from Crete in the Bronze Age, there isn't a single Minotaur. Zilch. Plenty of bulls, lots and lots of bulls, but no Minotaur. It's only towards late, let's say around 1400 B.C.,

• 12:21Speaker 04

  that you find very, very few representations on seal stones, tiny, tiny objects about this size, that seem to represent hybrid figures.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  But it's not just men's and bulls. It's sometimes it looks like men with the head of a goat or with head of dogs or women, you can see, because they have big breasts, with the head of animals. And when it comes to these figures, that recall for us the image of the minotaur we are familiar with from later, from classical iconography, body of a man, head of a bull. This had been interpreted as schematic scenes showing people performing bull leaping. Because in Minoan Crete, as I said, there are plenty, plenty of representations of bulls.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  And one of the most peculiar characteristic, familiar image for Minoan Crete is people performing acrobatic over bulls. So what we find in these late seal stones, these images that seem like the head of a bull and the legs of a man are probably schematic representations of bull leaping. I'm afraid no real minotors in the Bronze Age.

• 13:54Tristan Hughes?

  But it's so interesting, regardless, I mean, of those seal stones, and we'll explore more of that as the chat goes on. Nico, though, I would like to ask about this figure of King Minos, who of course is so big in mythology and of course the naming of Minotaur, the bull of Minos. Do we think it could be possible that the mythical figure of King Minos was based on an actual Minoan king? Do we think this is a real figure or a mythical figure, Minos?

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Very good question. And it is not impossible that there may have been some kind of figure, a figure upon which some of these stories have been elaborated, reinvented. It is not impossible. There must have been. Some important figure who ruled in Crete at some point. It has been suggested even that the name Minos is a bit like Caesar. That at some point it became a dynastic title. Like Caesar, from historical character called Caesar, was then used as a dynastic

• 15:09Speaker 04

  title by later emperors and indeed by the Russian Tsar. The word Tsar comes from Caesar. I can't say that this is a fact. I think it's a very ingenious explanation, but to think of Minos, the father of Ariadne, the father of Phaedra, the stepfather of the Minotaur as a real historical character, I think that would be a bit too far. But any character must be inspired in part by something real.

• 15:49Tristan Hughes?

  It is because it's also interesting how that you can sometimes look at figures in mythology and then explore whether there is a historical basis to them, whether it's the Trojan War or people like maybe King Midas or King Creuses in Asia Minor. So it's interesting at least to explore that with Minos as well.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 16:45Speaker 05

  What started the civil war? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America?

• 16:59Speaker 05

  I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership. Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it, the history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 18:08Tristan Hughes?

  So Nico, Minos is associated with the palace at Knossos in southern Crete, which is a place Assassin's Creed Odyssey recreates for players to explore. In fact, we're looking at the moment in the game when players can go underneath the palace and into the labyrinth. Now, does the game's representation of the labyrinth, I mean, does it reflect where and what ancient Greeks might have imagined it to be?

• 18:31Speaker 04

  No, they didn't. One of the great things about Assassin's Creed, the little bits I've seen, is that they present a reconstruction of the ruin of the palace. And I think what is really clever about Assassin's Creed, and something that actually sometimes I use when I try to explain things to my students about the relationship between the actual physical remains...

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Of the Bronze Age and the later, much later Greek myths that we have in various texts is this, that the Greeks of later periods must have seen the ruins of the Bronze Age palace of Knossos. But the people who had built this palace, the people who had painted the frescoes, and perhaps some of the frescoes might have still been visible on the walls for some centuries after the final destruction and abandonment of Knossos.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  People must have wanted to explain these ruins and therefore invented these amazing stories about King Minos and his family. The ruins of the palace were part of 5th, 6th, 7th century B.C. Crete, but these buildings were no longer part of living memory. People had forgotten who had built these ruins. People had forgotten who had even destroyed perhaps these buildings. But the ruins were there. And this is why Assassin's Creed is so good for me as a teacher, because I can show,

• 20:23Speaker 04

  well, you have to imagine yourself being a Greek, seeing these amazing ruins and trying to make a sense of them. People invent stories. As people in other parts of Europe have invented stories because of, you know, princesses in ruined castles and so on.

• 20:46Tristan Hughes?

  It almost seems like, as you say, princesses in castles, or I might think of St. George Staying the Dragon, you know, that is something, let's say in England, that we've bought into with our culture and that is something you see images of time and time again. Was it also a case with the people who lived at Knossos in classical Greek times or on Crete? Did they really buy into this myth? Because I remember seeing coins which depicts the labyrinth. It feels like they really buy into the myth.

• 21:14Speaker 04

  Absolutely, but the coins date to a much later period, fifth, fourth century BCE. And that is exactly, but it's, you know, like people invented stories about Stonehenge and the druid. It's something similar. The idea that the Greeks believed that there was a labyrinth underneath these ruins is certainly possible. Sir Arthur Evans would have said that in fact it was the ruins and the kind of almost labyrinthine structure of the ruins of Knossos that gave birth to this idea that this was the labyrinth of King Minos.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  You have to remember that the ruins, the Bronze Age ruins of Knossos remained visible, but certainly by the second century BCE, they were no longer visible. And in fact, after that, people started identifying the labyrinth with other parts of Crete. Some people thought that the labyrinth was a series of quarries dug in Roman time that are to the south of the island. Because again, people had forgotten some of their ancient sources that explained exactly where Knossos was and so on. And so they sought the labyrinth elsewhere.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  And a lot of visitors, say in the 16th, 17th, even 18th century, were taken around these labyrinthine quarries in a different part of Crete.

• 22:54Tristan Hughes?

  I'd like to also ask about the whole word labyrinth, Nico, because especially when you keep saying it again and again and again, it's a rather weird word. Do we know much about, I mean, the origins of the word labyrinth, or how it comes into being?

• 23:09Speaker 04

  There is Linear B tablet from Knossos dating from about, let's say, 1300 B.C., ballpark figure, that may contain the word labyrinth, but it's spelt with a D instead of an L, but could have sounded as L. Words that end in -inth, I-N-T-H, are not

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Very Greek, although they may still be Indo-European. And they may belong to a kind of pre-Greek substratum of population. I mean, we know Minoans didn't speak Greek. We know that before people who spoke an early form of Greek arrived in Greece, people spoke a different language. But we don't really know. I'm not really a linguist, but one thing I know is that some people, Evans and Primus in particular,

• 24:16Speaker 04

  wanted the word labyrinth to derive from another word, which is labris, which means double ax. But there are problems, because why should labyrinth be related to labris? It doesn't work linguistically. Moreover, in the Greek language, the word labris is attested for the first time much, much later. And the word used for double ax is pelicus. Evans wanted this to be labyrinth connected with labris, a word that means double ax.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  And he wanted this to mean that the labyrinth was the house of the double ax, because many of the mason's marks of the signs that he found inscribed on the stones of the palace at Knossos were double axes. But apart from the linguistic problem that deriving labyrinth from labris doesn't work linguistically, to me, there is another issue here, is that, yes, the double ax is very, very common at Knossos as a mason mark.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  But one, we don't know that that was the word used to indicate this particular sign as back as 1200, 1300, or even, you know, 800 BCE, because the word labris is not attested in Greek until much later. Yes, the sign of the double ax is very common at Knossos, but it's also known at other sites in Crete. I remember seven, eight years ago, I was digging at a site in the Far East of Crete called Palekastro, and I found a building that had some nice blocks, and one of these

• 26:15Speaker 04

  blocks also had this nice sign of a double ax. And other signs are also very common at Knossos, not just the double ax. There are other mazes marks with other types of signs that are also very common there. Not a very close link, I'm afraid, between labris, labyrinth, double ax. Nice story, though.

• 26:41Tristan Hughes?

  A nice story, and I remember when I was at the Ashmolean Museum a couple of years ago, like being shown a bit of Minoan pottery, which had, it might have been Lath pottery, but it had a double ax on it, and you have artifacts, the double ax. So even if labyrinth, you know, it isn't related to the word labris, the double ax was still evidently important to these people. Nico, I must also ask, going back to the palace a little longer, because I've also seen, I mean, there is a plan of the Bronze Age palace, and it is huge, there is over a thousand rooms. I mean, could that be a contribution to its link to the labyrinth? The fact that it was just almost a maze of so many different rooms?

• 27:21Speaker 04

  Yes, and also, I think, the fact that Minoan architecture compared to later classical Greek architecture is more confusing, it's not so symmetrical. So I think that also may have led to this idea. I don't know whether there are 1,000 rooms, I never counted them. But, but yes, there are many rooms, there are lots of corridors. And also, you know, it must have been awe inspiring and for people coming from small villages around Crete.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  And, and just the ruins, the ruins must have seemed quite awe inspiring to the people of the eighth, seventh century who lived on Crete. Many years after Knossos was destroyed and abandoned. And actually, we know they left little offerings, little pots, little figurines next to the still standing walls of the palace. I think that's when a lot of the stories must have been created.

• 28:37Tristan Hughes?

  It's that afterlife of the palace which is also so interesting. And of course, when you get figures like Sir Arthur Evans and other people who excavated Knossos, do they uncover a lot of depictions of bulls from the Minotaur Palace and the nearby areas? To once again reinforce that link with the Minotaur of mythology.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Imagine if, for example, some of the amazing frescoes from Knossos with bulls stayed for a bit longer on the walls and were visible. By at times when the painting of these frescoes, the constructions of the palace, as I said, were no longer part of living memory.

• 29:20Tristan Hughes?

  So, so people could actually venture in and, you know, see the remains and could actually see these frescoes, these wall paintings and once again, don't have that connection, but then they can create those stories from it?

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. You know, the palace is destroyed around, let's say, 1200 B.C. or 1350 B.C., depending on who you believe. For centuries, nothing happens, or not much. And then around 800 B.C. or so on, sometimes people go there and leave some offerings. And then only many centuries later, at some point on top of the palace, people build a Greek temple. But we are talking of perhaps in 1,000 years after the palace was destroyed. It was almost like people had... Not exactly fear, but some issues with these ruins.

• 30:15Tristan Hughes?

  Do you think that that maybe that later fear in later history, or maybe that kind of sacred, potentially a word, I mean, associated with the ruins of the palace, do you think that helps preserve some of the art which was later discovered within, you know, because you didn't have it robbed all the time like like other places, there was maybe a fear of later antiquity of going in there?

• 30:38Speaker 04

  There are some places of memory that for us, think of the Twin Towers, Auschwitz. Of course, I'm not saying that the Minoan palace was something like that. What I'm saying is that there is a relationship between some of the memories that people have of a place and what people do or do not do. Normally, say, if a place is destroyed by a big earthquake or something, sometimes people simply just go back and rebuild and continue to live there. But there are some events that people don't go back, they prefer to move elsewhere.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  And we don't know, but it is interesting that Knossos is not immediately re inhabited. There is a big destruction, but it's not that the people vanish, but they just don't go back and build there. Later, bits of the palace were destroyed, but more by, much, much later, people using beautiful stones to build their own houses and other things.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 32:35Speaker 05

  What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America?

• 32:46Speaker 05

  I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors where the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership. Find American History Hit twice a week, every week, wherever you get your podcasts. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.

• 33:28Tristan Hughes?

  I'd like to go back to the architectural layout of the palace, but actually go beneath where it's commonly assumed that the labyrinth was, and as it's shown in Assassin's Creed, Odyssey, and so on. Now, with archaeological excavations there, I've done many interviews before, and I love talking about the underworld beneath the buildings, the sewers and the drainage, because it's such an important part of ancient civilizations. I mean, if there wasn't a labyrinth underneath the palace, do we know much about that important, you know, not seen part? Do we know much about the sewers and the drainage? And was there a Bronze Age toilet in the palace as well?

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Yes, there was certainly a sewage system or a drainage system. But I was also thinking of, as you were talking and talking, you know, something underneath. When we are digging an archaeological site, we always think of something as underneath, underneath the soil. But it wasn't necessarily underneath in the Bronze Age.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  This is what happens when sites are destroyed. You know, walls fall in, wind, other things bring soil in. And in most cases, in fact, when people do rebuild on top of ruins, things become underneath, become below the soil, but not because they were originally so, but because people built on top. And this is why in some countries you have lots and lots of archaeological sites that are called tells, that are little mounds. Because, you know, the settlements start at this level

• 35:15Speaker 04

  and then people keep building on top, on top, on top, and so create these tell or mounds, or heyuk in Turkey. I mean, if you think of the level of the street in London, what it must have been, even only 200 years ago, it's much, much lower. Because when people build, repair a street, they don't dig and re-asphalt, re-re-rebuild or... You build on top. So it looks as if things are below the ground, but it's simply it's because the street level has risen. To some extent, this is what also happened a bit at Knossos.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  Yes, there are rooms that were basements, but also rooms that were at ground floor, now look as if they are underneath the ground because things have fallen in. As an archaeologist, it's always fun to explain this to people, that we have risen. It's not that things are necessarily under the ground. They are under the ground now, but there are all kinds of reasons why they are under the ground. And it's not because they were labyrinth underneath the palace. But there was certainly a very sophisticated drainage system,

• 36:40Speaker 04

  so big that people can actually go inside and crawl. I have a couple of colleagues, friends of mine, many years ago, wrote an article about this and they spent part of their summer crawling inside.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  The grains of Knossos.

• 37:00Tristan Hughes?

  It's not the ideal place where a Minotaur would be anyway, but actually I find this stuff even more interesting, like to learn, yeah, and about actually how these people lived in the palace and with all this drainage and so on. And Nico, as time goes on, later in ancient history, then in medieval times and Renaissance, and the fact that the myth of the Minotaur is always there, one of the most popular myths of ancient Greece, is it almost as if overshadows the rest of the Minoan story, especially as the Minoans become almost a lost civilization for so long, that when you do get to the people like Sir Arthur Evans and others, when they're starting to dig around there, do they have like a copy of their Minotaur myth in one hand and a shovel in the other and they want

• 37:43Tristan Hughes?

  to find evidence for it? So does it kind of cloud their judgment when excavating a site like Knossos?

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Yes and no, but perhaps more yes than no. I'll tell you why. It's not that Evans would go and dig at Knossos with a story of the Minotaur in his hand, but obviously, I mean, he knew his classics very, very well and therefore knew about this. And he certainly interpreted, very, very early on, he found an impression made on clay by a seal that he calls the young Minotaur. I think that was in 1901. And people have studied this

• 38:32Speaker 04

  image again and again. And it turns out that this Minotaur is not a Minotaur, but a monkey.

• 38:39Tristan Hughes?

  The monkey tour. Okay, okay.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  You see, Evans is looking at this image in 1901.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  And saying, "This is a young Minotaur." And even twenty years later, even much later, still calling it the Minotaur, even if by then, he should have known better. His idea of linking labris with labyrinth, yes, the classical sources have influenced and will continue to influence people's perceptions of the Minoans. And this is good and bad. I think it's bad when people are trying to fit in their interpretation of the archaeology and so on. But on the other hand,

• 39:33Speaker 04

  what the name of Knossos was, when, how the locals called the area in the late 19th century, early 20th century. The area that was excavated by Evans and before Evans, the first person that had a modern excavation of Knossos was called Minos, Minos, Minos Eluceriinos. He dug there in 1878. And it's because of his excavations or what he found that eventually Evans decided to dig there. But the place where they were digging was known by the locals as Tapitharia, which means the place of the pithoid,

• 40:17Speaker 04

  these large storage jars, or tuzelevi i kefala, the squires know. Tuzelevi is a Turkish word that means the sire, the squire. If you were offered to go and visit the archaeological site Tapitharia or tuzelevi i kefala, or the squires know, to visit the palace of Minos. Which would you choose? In a sense, it's good to maintain the association that these places have with Greek mythology.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  But I think it's important for people to understand that, yes, there isn't really a Minotaur, there isn't a King Minos, but that the ruins acted as catalyst for the creation of these amazing stories.

• 41:14Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely, Nico. And it's, we could talk for a long time about that legacy of the Minoans since they are rediscovered just over a hundred years ago, couldn't we? And how you have that myth looming large in the background, one of the most popular myths, Greek mythology. And many people seeing these new discoveries from Knossos and with that myth looming large in the back of their mindset. But trying to interpret the Minoans and you get these various different interpretations of the Minoan civilization. There's a kind of a pacifist one, isn't there as well? And but then there's the the bull leaping and everything. It's fascinating how that legacy of the Minoans, it's very, it changes and changes throughout the 20th century.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  Yes, indeed. Some years ago, I actually published a book on this, which looks precisely at how the Minoans have been used, reinvented beyond archaeology in other cultural practices, from opera to paintings, poetry. It's absolutely fascinating. And, you know, sometimes people take the inspiration only from the Bronze Age structures and invent new stories. And some people use a mixture of the old mythology, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur

• 42:41Speaker 04

  and Ariadne, the clue of Ariadne and so on. But also... Color, give a kind of Bronze Age local color to these old well-known stories. I mean, the most famous of all probably are the books by Mary Reynolds, The King Must Die and The Bull From The Sea, which is a retelling, a retelling of the story of Thessus, but using an awful lot of allusions and Bronze Age background.

• 43:16Tristan Hughes?

  Well, Nika, I've got a good question for you to wrap this up. In Assassin's Creed, you can use something called an animus to go back in time. If you had an animus and you could go back to Bronze Age Minoan Crete, you could go to Knossos. I mean, is there a particular moment from the history of Knossos that you would want to go and visit? Or a particular place you'd want to see and understand from the archaeology that you've done?

• 43:44Speaker 04

  Well, how many sanctuaries am I allowed? Because I can tell you one thing. I wouldn't want to be there towards the end. I would like to be there at the beginning. I would like to be there around, let's say, 1900 B.C. I would like to see supposedly the first monumental building of Knossos is being, is constructed. I would like to see that. For me, as an archaeologist, it would be fantastic

• 44:25Speaker 04

  to try and understand what the so-called first Minoan palace really looked like. Because we think of the Palace of Minos, the Palace at Knossos, Vestas, people who have visited Minoan palaces. Most of what they see are structures that date to, let's say, from about 1600 B.C. or later.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  And people who have studied the Minoans and their so-called palaces usually talk of a first palace period and the second palace period. And at Festos and other sites, things are a bit clearer than at Knossos. At Knossos, the remains of the so-called first palace are pretty slim on the ground, whether perhaps because a lot of them have been destroyed and the second palace has been built on top. So this is where I would like to see whether Knossos was really already the most powerful

• 45:42Speaker 04

  place on the island of Crete, or whether perhaps the people in the south, the people at Festos, were the top dogs. 1900 BC. And if I could, I'd like to be a man, not a woman.

• 45:58Tristan Hughes?

  Well, Nico, this has been absolutely brilliant and really highlighting not just the story of the Minotaur and the labyrinth, but also delving into the archaeology and the work and what links to the Minotaur myth and what doesn't, and actually exploring what did lie beneath the palace at Knossos. Sewers, not labyrinth. Nico, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  Thank you very much. Lovely to see you again.

• 46:32Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Professor Nico Momelliano talking through the story of the Minoan labyrinth. Truth versus myth. What do we know? What is the archaeology saying? I hope you enjoyed the episode. An episode that was first released on our sister podcast, Echoes of History. So if you want more history over the Christmas break, definitely go and check out their archive. Thank you once again for listening to this episode. Please follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Now, don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with the new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 47:17Tristan Hughes?

  That's all from me, wishing you a very Merry Christmas, and I'll see you in the next episode.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalised AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 48:03Speaker 06

  In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

• 48:23Speaker 06

  If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure. In Our Time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.