Cretan architecture
The Babylonian and the Egyptian style of building was found in these two countries, but neither Babylonians nor Egyptians went much across the sea—the Mediterranean Sea. But these Cretans, as I have said, were great sea-goers. They were the great naval power in the Mediterranean. So they went, and carried with them their ideas and their ways of building, everywhere. The effect of that is seen most of all perhaps at the site of an old Greek city on the mainland of Greece, Mycenæ, where great excavations have been made. But the effect is found in many other places too. So it has come down through the Greeks and through the Romans, and has been in the minds and in the eyes of later builders, although the builders were generally, as we may suppose, not at all aware that they owed anything to these builders of so many thousands of years ago.
It is a curious thing that in Egypt, in Babylonia, and also in Crete, some of the very oldest buildings and some of the very oldest works of art are the best. We have a comfortable idea in our minds that we—that is to say, mankind—have been making progress, have been improving, all through the story; but unfortunately there are some things in which we do not seem to have improved—some kinds of work in which the oldest is the best.
And as I have said that the ancient buildings found in Crete are of a style that does not look nearly so strange to us as the ancient buildings of the countries on the mainland, so the Minoan engravings show us the people of that very far-off time dressed in a fashion that seems almost familiar to us. They do not look nearly so strange as the people that we see pictured and graven on the walls of those other palaces and tombs and temples.
We find many evidences, and evidences of many different kinds, of the sea-faring habits of the ancient Cretans, and of their great power. We find Minoan works of art in the tombs of Egyptian kings, and Egyptian ornaments in the Minoan palaces. We find, as I have said, the Minoan bronze work as far to the west as Sicily. Athens, the great Athens of Greece, seems to have been subject to the Minoans and to have paid tribute to them. And a very cruel form some of that tribute took. According to the old historians, they had to send seven maidens and seven youths each year to Crete; and we seem to be able to guess the purpose for which they were sent.
The legend is that they had to be sent each year to be devoured by, or be sacrificed to, a Cretan monster called the Minotaur. The name Minotaur is from Minos and tauros, meaning a bull. It was figured as a half human, half bull-like monster.
The Labyrinth
One of the most famous of the buildings discovered by the diggers in Crete is the Labyrinth, a building of an immense number of passages in which you were almost certain to lose your way if you did not know it. You would be lost, and never come back, and the Minotaur was supposed to live in this Labyrinth, and you would wander about there till he came upon you and killed you.