Knossos, the Labyrinth, and What Evans Built

The Minoan palace at Knossos was excavated by Arthur Evans from 1900, and almost everything popular culture knows about the Minotaur passes through his interpretation of it. The site is genuinely complex in plan, and Evans connected that complexity to the labyrinth of the myth. He also connected the name: labrys, a double axe, appears repeatedly in Minoan contexts, and the derivation of labyrinth from it as the house of the double axe is his proposal rather than an ancient statement.

Bull imagery at the site is not in doubt. Frescoes show figures vaulting over a bull's back, horns of consecration appear as architectural fittings, and bull-head rhyta were used for pouring. Whether any of it depicts what the Athenian myth describes is another question, and the myth is Athenian, told from the point of view of a city that paid tribute.

The caution that has to travel with the site is that Evans reconstructed. Concrete was poured, columns were raised, and frescoes were restored from small fragments by painters working to his direction. Visitors photograph a great deal of early twentieth-century work. The excavation is still the foundation of Aegean archaeology, and separating what was found from what was completed is ordinary practice in the field, not a scandal.