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

The Labyrinth at Knossos 477

incuse corners (figs. 333, 334) passes into a framework enclosing a
square (fig. 335), and its central star (sun?) is replaced by a human
(fig. 336) or bovine head (fig. 337) or whole figure (fig. 338)1. On

Fig. 336. Fig. 337. Fig. 338.

the other hand, the swastika apart from its incuse corners (figs. 339,
340, 341) becomes a maze, which is first square (fig. 342) and then
circular (fig. 343) but retains at least a trace of its original form to

Fig- 342. Fig. 343.

the last. Thanks to Sir Arthur Evans, we now know that this
Labyrinth-design was already familiar to the Cnossians of the
Bronze Age. In one of the corridors of the second palace at
Knossos 'the fallen plaster...showed the remains of an elaborate
series of mazes2,' based on the motif of the swastika*.

Nnmismatiqite de la Crete ancienne Macon 1890 i. 65 ff. pis. 46°. and in the 'B0. 'Apx-
1889 p. 199 ff. nos. 13—21, Head Hist, num.'1 p. 460 ff., Anson Num. Gr. vi pi. 13,
764—771, 14, 773—806.

1 Cp. Roman mosaics, which represent the slaying of the Minotaur within a large
framework of maeander-pattern (see Welcker Alt. Denkm. ii. 303 f. and for further
bibliography P. Gauckler in Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. iii. 2101 notes 17 and 18
fig. 5240).

'2 A. J. Evans in the Ann. Brit. Sch. Ath. 1901—1902 viii. 103.

3 Id. id. viii. 104 fig. 62. Cp. ib. p. 103 f.: lA simple key or maeander pattern