Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here,
Speaker 1: the name minotaur summons the image of a man with
Speaker 1: the head of a bull, a raging hybrid that serves
Speaker 1: as a sort of stock creature in gains and films.
Speaker 1: But to understand this creature, sometimes known as Asterion or Asterius,
Speaker 1: we must confront him where he lives within the labyrinth
Speaker 1: of mythology, history, and the human psyche. To start with,
Speaker 1: let's remember the basic myth of the minotaur, as presented
Speaker 1: in Hellenic tradition and works like Ovid's The Metamorphoses. The
Speaker 1: story goes something like this. Once on the island of Crete,
Speaker 1: a king by the name of Minus sought to secure
Speaker 1: his rule. He prayed to Poseidon for a sacrificial beast
Speaker 1: he might offer up, But when the sea gods sent
Speaker 1: forth a white bull from the frothing Surfus found it
Speaker 1: too beautiful to sacrifice. Instead, he sacrificed mortal bulls, and
Speaker 1: thus incurred Poseidon's wrath. The sea god bewitched Minus's wife, Pacify,
Speaker 1: to fall in love with the white bull, and she
Speaker 1: soon gave birth to a monstrous hybrid, the Bull of
Speaker 1: Minus or the minotaur. Nas Klein's translation of the Metamorphoses,
Speaker 1: a first published in the year two thousand OVID, describes
Speaker 1: the minotaur as a strange hybrid creature, and the creature
Speaker 1: was strange, a twin form of bull and man that
Speaker 1: emerged out of divine wrath and on natural love. It
Speaker 1: embodied both shame and sacredness. Minus could only hope to hide,
Speaker 1: but not kill, this terrifying creature. Thus he employed the
Speaker 1: master craftsman Daedalus to construct the Labyrinth, a tortuous maze
Speaker 1: that was practically impossible to leave. Here, he housed the
Speaker 1: bellowing minotaur and feed it the blood of prisoners sent
Speaker 1: to Crete as tribute by other nations. Yet all monsters
Speaker 1: meet their slayer in the end. The Athenian hero Theseus
Speaker 1: took the place of a tribute sent to Crete, but
Speaker 1: he befriended Ariadne, the daughter of King Minus. She gave
Speaker 1: him a ball of string to unwind behind him, and
Speaker 1: details on the twists and turns that would lead him
Speaker 1: to the beast at the labyrinth's heart. There he slayed
Speaker 1: the minotaur and followed the string back to the surface.
Speaker 1: That's the gist myths however, emerge from long traditions of
Speaker 1: multiple tellings. Like the labyrinth itself, the origin of any
Speaker 1: given myth becomes a tangled maze that defies easy solution.
Speaker 1: Just when we think we've emerged from its trappings, we
Speaker 1: find ourselves lost too. In the words of Ovid, the
Speaker 1: windings of alternating paths. But let's not stand still less
Speaker 1: the minotaur find us here. Instead, let's first consider the
Speaker 1: historical significance of the myth. The story of the Minotaur
Speaker 1: is intrinsically tied to Crete and the Bronze Age Minoan
Speaker 1: civilization that thrived there. The early twentieth century British archaeologist
Speaker 1: Sir Arthur Evans actually coined the term Minoan civilization as
Speaker 1: a reference to the mythical King Minus. As such, a
Speaker 1: myth continues to haunt our modern conceptions of these ancient peoples.
Speaker 1: From their stories, you might assume the Greeks believed Crete
Speaker 1: to be an evil land full of brutal kings and
Speaker 1: profane monsters, but that's not the whole story. The creed
Speaker 1: of Greek myth could be contradictory, with some treatments of
Speaker 1: King Minus describing him as a wise Moses esque figure
Speaker 1: and others depicting him as the head of a royal
Speaker 1: household rife with murder, sacrilege, and betrayal. It's this latter
Speaker 1: version of Minus that lingers in modern culture. It's an
Speaker 1: example of what academic Joseph Campbell, who wrote extensively about mythology,
Speaker 1: described as the figure of the tyrant monster, an archetype
Speaker 1: of destructive, ego based disruption. In reality, the exact nature
Speaker 1: of Minoan rule is much debated, and the political system
Speaker 1: likely changed a few times over the course of the
Speaker 1: two millennia long Minoan Age. Scholarly interpretations include both royal
Speaker 1: rule and age ender balanced elite class that might be
Speaker 1: compared to a council or corporation a specific king. Minus, however,
Speaker 1: is not the only element of myth that's largely missing
Speaker 1: from the actual discertible history of Bronze Age Crete. The
Speaker 1: labyrinth is as well. For the article of this episode
Speaker 1: is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke via email with
Speaker 1: Nicoletta Momigliano, Professor of Agean Studies at the University of Bristol,
Speaker 1: an author of the book In Search of the Labyrinth,
Speaker 1: The Cultural Legacy of Minoan Crete. She said there is
Speaker 1: no building in minowing crete that can be described as
Speaker 1: a complicated maze, that is, a complicated system of paths
Speaker 1: or hedges, designed as a puzzle through which one has
Speaker 1: to find a way. But the ruins of Minoan palaces,
Speaker 1: especially the largest one, Nassis, can have a labyrinthine appearance.
Speaker 1: The aforementioned archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans was the excavator of Nassis.
Speaker 1: He equated the structure there with the labyrinth. However, a
Speaker 1: much of Evans's interpretation arrests on the linguistic connection between
Speaker 1: the word labyris meaning a double axe, with the prevalence
Speaker 1: of this motif appearing in the masonry. He was defining
Speaker 1: Labyrinth as the house of the double axe. Momic Leano said.
Speaker 1: One should note, however, that the connection between labyrinth and
Speaker 1: labyrinth appears to be much more tenuous than Evans suggested.
Speaker 1: Apart from the linguistic difficulties and relating the two words
Speaker 1: pointed out by several philologists, one may also observe that
Speaker 1: while Mason's marks in the shape of a double axe
Speaker 1: do appear most frequently at Nassis, they are not exclusive
Speaker 1: to this site, and other signs are also very common. Okay,
Speaker 1: but what about our monster of the hour, the minataur itself.
Speaker 1: While no one expects to find literal beast men amid
Speaker 1: the Minoan ruins, you might reasonably expect to find images
Speaker 1: of the creature so associated with the island. But while
Speaker 1: bulls do appear quite frequently in Minoan art, including depictions
Speaker 1: of humans leaping over the backs of charging bulls, the
Speaker 1: minotaur is another story, Mimicleano said. Interestingly, and contrastingly, depictions
Speaker 1: of minotaur images, that is, of a creature that is
Speaker 1: half man and half bull, are very rare and relatively
Speaker 1: late in Minoan crete, and one may also wonder whether
Speaker 1: these may be stylized representations of bull leaping, since they
Speaker 1: appear on tiny seal stones or seal impressions. We should
Speaker 1: also note here that animal human hybrid figures do factor
Speaker 1: into multiple traditional and ancient cultures, and Minoan crete is
Speaker 1: no exception, Mimigliano said, But there is no prevalence of
Speaker 1: bulls in these cases. They tend to involve other animals
Speaker 1: such as birds and goats. So how exactly one got
Speaker 1: from Minoan bulls to later Greek representations of the minotaur
Speaker 1: is not entirely clear. Some writers have proposed that accounts
Speaker 1: of the minotaur's subterranean bellowing might have been a way
Speaker 1: for ancient peoples to explain actual seismic rumblings. This idea
Speaker 1: is an exercise in what's known as geo mythology, which
Speaker 1: is the study of alleged references to geological events in mythology. However,
Speaker 1: this remains an open question, and Mimicliano cautions that it
Speaker 1: gets us no closer to unraveling the mystery of the minotaur.
Speaker 1: She said, while there are plenty of bulls in minoing
Speaker 1: crete and earthquakes, minotaur images are conspicuous by their almost
Speaker 1: total absence. The minotaur myth likely took many winding, alternating
Speaker 1: paths to reach its most popular form, and the monster
Speaker 1: has endured long beyond the empires that birthed it. Mamigliano said,
Speaker 1: of course, the minotaur would have had more specific associations
Speaker 1: for the ancient Greeks as an example of punishment for
Speaker 1: not keeping one's promises to the gods. But the story
Speaker 1: of the minotaur, like many other ancient Greek narratives, and
Speaker 1: not just Greek narratives, can be and has been endlessly
Speaker 1: reimagined to address different aspects of the human condition at
Speaker 1: different times and in different contexts. The Minotaur, in various
Speaker 1: forms and reinterpretations, has indeed appeared in Dante's Inferno and
Speaker 1: Picasso's art, in the Chronicles of Narnia and House of Leaves,
Speaker 1: in operas and schlocky horror television and Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: We just can't seem to get enough of this mythic beast.
Speaker 1: After all, the minotaur is a collision of the human
Speaker 1: and the beastial, a symbol of the oft pondered dual
Speaker 1: nature of man. He is both victim and tormentor. He's
Speaker 1: the punisher and yet a punishment himself, imprisoned in what
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell dubbed is Minus's house of death, a labyrinth
Speaker 1: of Cyclopean walls to hide from him his monster. Sigmund
Speaker 1: Freud equated the labyrinth of the minotaur with the darkness
Speaker 1: of the unconscious mind. For theseus, it's the monster hidden
Speaker 1: and pursued. For Minus, its shame secreted away, and for
Speaker 1: the minotaur himself it's an exercise and cruel and inescapable circumstance.
Speaker 1: These days, we often casually compare the labyrinth to other
Speaker 1: complex and often unpleasant systems like healthcare or criminal justice. Likewise,
Speaker 1: we can look to many examples in contemporary horror as
Speaker 1: further re interactions. Of the minotaur in his labyrinth, think
Speaker 1: of the chainsaw wielding Leatherface in his rural Texas deathhouse,
Speaker 1: or of Pennywise the clown in its sewers, or even
Speaker 1: of jaws in its ocean. They are all terrifying entities,
Speaker 1: made more terrifying by the environment they call home. In
Speaker 1: the words of or Hey Luis Borges in the Book
Speaker 1: of Imaginary Beings translated by Andrew Hurley, quote, Indeed, the
Speaker 1: image of the labyrinth and the image of the minotaur
Speaker 1: seem to go together. Is fitting that at the center
Speaker 1: of a monstrous house there should live a monstrous inhabitant.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article The Myth of
Speaker 1: the Minotaur, the Legendary Beast We Can't Forget on HowStuffWorks
Speaker 1: dot Com, written by Robert Lamb. To hear more from Rob,
Speaker 1: check out his podcast stuff to Blow Your Mind. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.