Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

The Labyrinth at Knossos

to a stone structure is still more remote1, the Labyrinth appearing
merely as a patterned oblong side by side with the dramatis
personae. Wolters concludes that the black-figured vases presup-
pose a primitive composition, in which the action portrayed was
accompanied by a ground-plan of the scene. He finds a parallel
in the Etruscan oinochoe from Tragliatella (fig. 332)2, on which

Fig- 332-

O. Benndorf3 recognised soldiers engaged in the game of 'Troy'
{Truia). It would seem, then, that Attic tradition points back-
wards to a time when the Labyrinth was depicted, not as a palace,
but as a maeander or swastika-pattern.

Fig. 333- Fig. 334. Fig. 335.

The same result is reached on Cretan soil. Coins of Knossos
from c. 500 B.C. onwards represent the Labyrinth by a swastika or
by some derivative of the swastika^. The pattern develops in two
directions. On the one hand, the swastika together with its four

two fragments of a skyphos showing (obverse) Theseus beside the Labyrinth and another
figure ; (reverse) perhaps the same design. The Labyrinth, to judge from Graef's plate,
tapers towards the top like an omphalos (?).

1 B. Graef Ant. Vasen Alhen p. 143 contends that the black-figured vases aim at
representing 'ein turmartiges Bauwerk' with a labyrinthine ground-plan, and ingeniously
compares the tholos at Epidauros.

2 W. Deecke in the Ann. d. Inst. 1881 liii. 160—168 pi. L—M, W. Helbig in the
Bull. d. Inst. 1881 p. 65 ff., Perrot—Chipiez Hist, de VArt vii. 118 fig. 15, Reinach Rip.
Vases i. 345.

3 O. Benndorf in the Sitzungsber. d. kais. Akad. d. Wiss. in Wien Phil.-hist. Classe
1890 cxxiii. 3. Helbig loc. cit. p. 67 had already thought of the same explanation.

4 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Crete p. i8ff. pis. 4 ff., Hunter Cat. Coins ii. 173 ff. pi. 40,
20—24, 41, 2, 3, 5, Babelon Monn. gr. rom. ii. 1. 1331 ff. pi. 62, 21 f., J. N. Svoronos