(The Ancren Riwle—Thirteenth century.)
When we turn from our native bowers to the Aegean labyrinthos, transmitted practically intact from the ancient Greek to most modern European languages, we are venturing on dangerous ground indeed, for the derivation of this word has been the subject of much disputation between rival schools of etymologists and philologists in recent years.
Down to a few decades ago we were content with the bald statement of most dictionaries that it was probably correlated with the word laura, meaning a passage, or mine,[5] though there was also a suggestion that it might be of Egyptian origin, viz., that it was derived from the name of Labaris (= Senusret III), erroneously conceived by the scribe Manetho to be the founder of the Hawara pile. Then Mr. Max Mayer put forward the suggestion that it might have some connection with labrys, a word which, in some of the early languages of Asia Minor, e.g., Lydia and Caria, denoted an axe, the axe being the symbol associated with the god known as Zeus Labrandeus or Zeus Stratios, the worship of whom was known to have taken place at Labranda, in Caria. Coins from Mylasa, a neighbouring town, show this god holding in his hand a double axe.
[5] "Coil-of-rope walk" according to Ruskin (Fors Clav.).
The stir created by the discovery of double axes in abundance, with every indication of their religious and symbolic use, during the course of Sir Arthur Evans's explorations in the traditional home of the Cretan labyrinth, can therefore be well understood. As a consequence thereof every self-respecting dictionary nowadays gives pre-eminence to the labrys derivation of "labyrinth." At the same time it is well to bear in mind that many learned scholars have seen great difficulty in accepting this theory, mainly on account of the metathesis, or change-over, of the r and the y (u in Greek), which was stated to be unexampled, and to the addition of the termination -inthos. With regard to the latter it now seems to be generally agreed among scholars that this termination occurs only in words which were assimilated from the pre-existing peoples of the Aegean lands, whom the Greeks, as northern invading hordes, overcame and superseded. The suffix is preserved only, however, in extremely few common nouns (terebinthos = the turpentine tree, asaminthos = a bathing-place), and in a similarly small number of place-names, such as Tirynthos (Tiryns) and Corinthos (Corinth). It is the equivalent of the ending -nda in certain place-names in Asia Minor, e.g., Labranda.
The conjectures that the word was connected with labros, meaning "great," or that it was derived from the old Egyptian la-pe-ro-hunt, "the temple at the mouth of the reservoir," are hardly worth repeating.
The present position, then, is that the Labyrinth is the House of the Double Axe, the implication being that the Cretan example was not, as formerly believed, a miniature reproduction of the temple of Hawara, but that the latter was actually given the title by analogy with the building at Knossos.
As regards the use of the word in our own language, it was probably well known to most of the churchmen of the early and middle ages, through the medium of the classic authors accessible to them, but it never passed into common speech. In Chaucer's works, i.e., in the fourteenth century, we find both maze and labyrinth employed; but whereas the latter evidently refers to the Cretan tradition, the English word seems to denote some figure familiar to the poet's readers—perhaps, we may conjecture, in the form of turf mazes.
Thus, in "The Hous of Fame" (line 826, etc.), he says:
"Tho gan I forth with him to goon
Out of the castel, soth to saye,
Tho saugh I stoude in a valeye,
Under the castel, faste by,
An hous, that domus Dedali
That Laborintus cleped is,
Nas maed so wonderliche, y-wis
Ne half so queynteliche y-wrought";