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

486 The Labyrinth at Knossos

Chartres cathedral (fig. 350)1. It measures 30 feet in diameter,
and its winding path is 668 feet long. The centre was formerly-
adorned with a representation of Theseus and the Minotaur. Such
a maze was called in the middle ages domus Dedali or maison
Dedalu or even, as in the inscription at Amiens, Maison de Dalus.
But new uses were found for the old design. Towards the close of
the Crusades men who had broken vows of pilgrimage to the
Holy Land did penance by treading these tortuous chemins de
Jerusalem until they reached the central space, often termed le ciel.
Later the same Labyrinths were used as a means of penance for
sins of omission and commission in general. .

In Great Britain mosaic mazes are exceptional and late2,
but turf-cut mazes fairly common and early3. They are mostly

Fig. 351-

situated close to a church or chapel, so that not impossibly they
served a penitential purpose. One at Alkborough in Lincolnshire,
44 feet across, even resembles in design (fig. 351)4 the Labyrinth
of Lucca cathedral. After the Reformation ecclesiastical mazes
were converted into pleasure-grounds. Aubrey states that before

1 E. Trollope loc. cit. p. 221 fig. 3 (from E. Wallet Description cPune Crypte et dun
Pave" mosdique de Pancienne iglise de St. Bertin a Saint-Omer Douai 1843 P- 97)-

2 E.g. there is one inside the west door of Ely cathedral; but it is of quite recent
date (1870).

3 The best collection of facts is contained in a paper by the Rev. F. G. Walker on
'Comberton Maze and the origin of Mazes' (read before the Cambridge Antiquarian
Society, February 8, 1909, but as yet unprinted). Mr Walker op. cit. p. 178". notes the
proximity of many English mazes to Roman remains and argues that some of them may
have been originally cut in Roman times.

4 E. Trollope loc. cit. p. 224 f. fig. 5.