Riddle of the Lost Labyrinth - An Ancient Enigma Unearthed

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Reports of unidentified flying outre, unidentified aerial phenomena aday bio weapons.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Being tested by our own or foreign governments.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
The Americans people are becoming.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
Most interested and in many instances very alarmed by the
UFO stories.

Speaker 5 (00:19):
So why do you suppose that all of this has
been kept from the world?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Exploring our past, our future, and the mysteries of our universe?

Speaker 5 (00:27):
Where?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Why can't you explain it? Everybody in youthology is screaming
for disclosure.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
The future is now.

Speaker 6 (00:34):
This is Micah Hanks.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
From the high mountains of Appalachia and a bunker below ground. Welcome,
one and all. It is the Micah Hanks Program. Glad
as always to be getting into gear and going in
pursuit of the anomalous in our existence, as we do
every week. Listen on demand via podcasting apps all throughout
space and time. Yes, greetings to all of you. I
hope you had a wonderful weekend. As of the moment,

(00:59):
I am sitting behind I'm the microphone right now talking
to you. It is a Monday afternoon. I've got my
hot coffee here handy because in addition to just loving coffee,
I needed a little extra warmth today in fact, I
think a lot of people throughout the United States did,
and that's because temperatures have dropped to nearly anomalous lows
even for this time of the year. It's a funny

(01:21):
phenomenon to me, how every year, when the first real
cold snap hits, it feels like you've never felt winter before.
And part of the reason for that in this beautiful
part of the country where I am is because I
spent part of my weekend trudging through the beautiful Great
Smoky Mountains National Park with my friends Seth Breedlove and
Jeff and Dakota and my brother Caleb. A bunch of

(01:44):
us were out there having a wonderful time enjoying the
remnants of fall color, and it was truly beautiful being
out there on the trail. Now, in this kind of weather,
you can wear anything you want to. There were people
wearing t shirts, there were people wearing long coats. And
this trend into Sunday as I'm standing out there on
my front porch, hot coffee in hand, but basking in

(02:06):
the autumn sunlight, standing there thinking how it feels a
whole lot more like an early spring or summer morning
than it does a day in November. Well by about
four o'clock on Sunday that all began to change. As
I went out to meet friends for dinner on Sunday night,
I had to don a wetter jacket, several layers in fact,

(02:28):
and as of this morning, I pull back the curtains
and as I peer outside at the landscape from the
windows that shelter me within my hank tas hank torum
here on the mountain side. Yes, I was quite startled
indeed to see a light dusting of snow on the ground.
Not very much, if anything. They're calling for more of
it tonight, but yes, there was just enough to have

(02:50):
accumulated overnight, and there was a beautiful white dusting in fact,
throughout the day on Monday. It is continued to snow,
but that's because the temperatures have plum limited over the
last couple of days, and there are parts of the
United States where there are below freezing warnings, so many
are experiencing even colder temperatures than I am. Stay warm
out there, be careful, as always around this time of

(03:12):
the year. You'll start to hear me say that a
little more often now. One thing I guess that is
thawing a little bit right now, A little bit at least,
is the chill that recently gripped Washington because we have
been trudging through the longest government shut down in history.
Politico here though, now reporting that the Senate has finally

(03:32):
advanced a plan to end this historic shutdown. Some are
calling this bipartisan breakthrough. Others are bickering and calling it
other things. Just use your imagination. But for my own part,
rather than looking at the politics, I'd like to focus
on two things. One, of course, the ongoing issue that

(03:52):
we are seeing with flight disruptions. A lot of people
got to travel, a lot of people fly pretty frequently.
I'm one of those people, and we are seeing not
only the continuance of air travel disruptions, but in fact
many are saying that this problem is probably going to
continue for well after the government finally gets things back
on track. Meanwhile, with many air traffic controllers refusing to

(04:15):
come to work, we have the President now threatening and
saying that they won't be paid if they didn't show
up for work. CNBC reporting here that flight cancelations were
piling up again on Monday, as air traffic controller shortages
worsened by the longest ever US government shut down snarled
air traffic coast to coast, while President Donald Trump threatened

(04:35):
to dock air traffic controllers pay if they were absent
from work. They said that on Monday, one thy six
hundred and twenty three of twenty five seven hundred and
thirty five scheduled US flights were canceled. That's about six
point three percent of the day's schedule, though on time
departures were better than average, hopefully a good sign after
some of what we've seen recently. But again, I've got

(04:56):
a lot of experts saying, hey, folks, listen, travel at
your own risk. I know I'm going to be staying
on the ground or I will be limited to automotive
travel by ground for the time being until this situation
gets a little better. But another thing that a lot
of people are facing right now involves healthcare. Yes, of
course we're about to see a big shake up with that.

(05:17):
Also USA Today reporting here that if you're one of
the millions of Americans enrolled in Affordable Care Act health
insurance plans frequently known as Obamacare, you're likely facing the
prospect of sharply higher expenses next year with no guaranteed
relief insight. According to USA Today, a bipartisan deal to
end a month long government shutdown doesn't change that. The

(05:38):
agreement to reopen the government pushes a decision on ACA
affordability to next month December. As USA Today reports, that's
when Congress will decide whether to extend COVID nineteen pandemic
era tax credits that make the ACA plans more affordable.
If the credits aren't extended, they'll expire at the end
of twenty twenty five. Now, from many out there, this

(06:00):
is the time of year where every year you are
renewing your health insurance policy for the next year, either
keeping the one that you've got or reviewing new plans
and looking at what your options are now. Personally, I
am a person who pays for health insurance out of
pocket because I've been self employed for many years. And
as I was reviewing plans today, I was seeing yet
again what I'm sure a lot of people are experiencing.

(06:22):
Almost every plan has gone up in costs several hundred dollars,
some by as much as double the price of what
they were for the last year. And so sadly, something
tells me that we aren't going to be able to
overcome these issues anytime soon. I tell you, folks, it
is times like these where I certainly have the inclination

(06:42):
if only I had a little more of the time.
But I am so damned tempted to bring back the
Middle Theory podcast. There is so much I want to
say about things that are happening in the world out there,
so many issues that are so important to so many people,
virtually everybody, no matter which side of the fence you
might exist on. Who knows, maybe I'll have to make

(07:02):
a new Year's resolution as the world continues to get crazy,
I may have to just start pretending I've got eight
days in every work week and find some way to
carve out that precious time to get back into the
middle Theory game. But again, more on that maybe at
another time. For the rest of the world, though, who
tries to avoid thinking about these things? Given the current

(07:22):
state of the world we're living in, it's easy, I
think to see why many people would want to stick
their heads in the sand. In fact, I guess there's
that other part of me that would want to be
one of those people too. And really that's why this
week we're going to be doing that. We're going to
put our heads in the sand. That's right. I am
officially inviting you now to embark on a quest with
me as we do one of our deep dives into

(07:44):
archaeology and ancient mysteries, as we so often do. Because
there are a lot of fun archaeology stories in the
news right now, I've got a fun topic in mind
that I know that you'll enjoy, and in fact, many
of our listeners enjoy the archaeology shows more than anything
else we do, even though these days there are only
periodic features here on the Micah Hanks program. But also

(08:06):
because I am fascinated with the idea of the labyrinth,
the mysterious underground maze of myth and also which archaeologists
have long pursued, and a lot of interesting ideas coming
to fruition about that. So we're going to dive into
that here in a bit. First, a few news items
on that subject of archaeology. Right now. There's something really

(08:27):
strange that turned up in the Swiss Alps that officials
are now seeking help from the public to try and
figure out what it is. Because recently, a hiker who
has been making their way along the splugan pass discovered
an unusual two wheeled bamboo cart emerging from melting glacier ice,
and this is prompted archaeologists to request help trying to

(08:49):
figure out where this thing could have come from. Now, first,
a few things about this that make it strange. It's
not an ancient discovery per se. Experts think it probably
just dates to some time in the twentieth century. But
it's made from bamboo, and that's weird because of course
it's a material not native to Switzerland. Now, bamboo was
available in parts of Europe by at very least the

(09:13):
late eighteenth century, so it wouldn't necessarily be strange for
a very weird looking bamboo cart to turn up somewhere
up in these Swiss Alps sometime in the twentieth century.
But even still, there's a lot of speculation about what
exactly it might have been used for. What would this
thing be doing up there anyway? One idea is that
it might have been involved in smuggling activities. If you

(09:36):
think about somebody trying to bring illicit materials across the border,
you know, going by air or traveling by car is
going to be the obvious way. But an intrepid smuggler
moving by foot mostly by cover of night, and carrying
whatever it is the contraband that they're trying to bring
across the Swiss border. And they're wheeling whatever the contraband

(09:57):
they're carrying is along behind them on this kruge car art.
I mean that could at least make sense. So the
Archaeological Service of Graubunden has not yet launched a full investigation,
but they are seeking information from anybody out there who
might recognize this object or its design. If you'd like
to see some pictures. By the way, I did an
article about this for us over at thedebrief dot org.

(10:18):
We always try to get some archaeology stories into the
mix over there. And in fact, another one right now
that I'll reference by my Palato Macmillan, has to do
with something that has finally unraveled a mystery in Peru.
And these are known as the Band of Holes, a
mile long chain of more than five thousand pits carved
into the hills of the Pisco Valley. It is baffled

(10:40):
researchers really, since they were first detected way back in
nineteen thirty three in National Geographic Aerial Photography as you
can imagine, these strange features, like so many others of
the ancient world, have prompted very imaginative speculation, even the
idea that these were maybe landing pads for alien spacecraft,
the probes being a jet out of the rear end

(11:01):
of three I atlas and things of that sort.

Speaker 6 (11:04):
But no.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
In fact, what a new study in antiquity has put forward.
In that study, led by doctor Jacob L. Bongers, it
argues that the site, known locally as Monte Sierpe was
not a fortification, not a tomb field, not a mining operation,
not an alien helipad, but a sophisticated indigenous record keeping
and exchange center that they say dates back to the

(11:27):
Chingka Kingdom and later was used by the Inca Empire.
Now to come to this conclusion, they used new drone
mapping technologies which revealed repeating numerical patterns in the arrangement
of these holes, and they say that while microbotanical analysis
did find traces of crops like maize and squash and
other things, they also think that probably these were consistent

(11:49):
with trade goods and basket transport as opposed to being
used for farming themselves. So the researchers suggest that these
pits once served as a temporary receptacle for these goods
in a marketplace, and later as a large scale accounting
system similar to inca kipus, with different sections corresponding to
social groups depositing tributes. So no, not evidence of ancient

(12:11):
astronauts so much as ancient accountants. But the real home
run story of the last few days was by my
pell Ryan Whalen, writing for us there at the debrief.
This was one of our biggest stories last week. Archaeologists
working at eck Balam in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula now say
they've uncovered a newly inscribed vault marker that sheds light

(12:33):
on the city's political and ceremonial life during the Maya
late classical period. Now, having traveled down there to the
Yukaton and having seen some of these massive structures that
date from this period, I've always been fascinated by Maya
and Aztec architecture and the cultures of those ancient societies,

(12:54):
and so this marker naturally was intrigued to me. It's
been designated TB twenty nine. It was found as a
carved vault lied inside room eighty five at the site
and bears the image of what is known as Kaweel,
the Maya deity of lightning power and royal legitimacy. You
might kind of think of this as sort of the
Maya equivalent of thor Well. The inscription includes a date

(13:17):
equivalent to September eighteenth, seven eighty two AD, which they
say likely marks the ceremonial ceiling of that chamber. The
discovery was part of a broader excavation led by archaeologists
Letitia Vargas de la Pagna and Victor Castillo Borgis, who
also uncovered eight vault covers across nine rooms, suggesting this
sector of ek Balam served elite and ritual functions tied

(13:41):
to the Kingdom of Talloul. Excavations also revealed elaborate decorations,
including warriors, captives, sacred animals, and all of this further
highlighting how this site ek Bollom's rulers blended architecture and
religion and imagery into a single power. But altogether, archaeologists
are saying that these discover are deepening our understanding not

(14:02):
only of that side and its elite culture, but also
the strategies that rulers used in that region and during
that period the Maya Late Classic period to legitimize their
authority more than a thousand years ago. All this just
makes me so eager to get back down there and
engage in some field archaeological studies. I missed that so

(14:22):
very much. Might have to call my pals with the
Seven Ages research Associates Jason and James up and hit
the road before too long. But for the here and now,
I think we'll engage in a different kind of archaeological
time travel, because I want you to join me in
a trip back through time and into the heart of
ancient mysteries and mythology as we go in pursuit of

(14:42):
the mythic origins of the ancient Greek idea of the Labyrinth,
but also the archaeological search over the Ages for its
real life underground counterparts that awaits when we return right
here on the Micah Hanks program.

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Speaker 1 (17:27):
They say it began with a king who would not
listen to the sea. In the old stories, the heart
of Nosos was not its throne room or painted corridors,
but the thing hidden beneath them, a twisting labyrinth crafted
by Daedalus at the command of King Minos. Here in

(17:48):
the dark turns of a structure said to confound even
its maker, the monstrous minotaur waited, half man and half bull,
a living reminder of divine punishment and royal secrecy. Each
year Athenian youths were let inside his tribute, their fate
sealed in the maze's unending passages. Until theseus, guided by

(18:12):
Ariadne's thread, braved the shadows and broke the cycle. Whether
or not such a place ever existed in Stone, the
myth made Nosos a kingdom built around a riddle, its
identity forever bounds to the winding paths no one could see,
and the monster that made them necessary. The story, long

(18:35):
told over the ages, comes down through the centuries like this. Minos,
the ruler of Crete, had bargained with Poseidon for a
sign of divine right, and received a white bull, who
splendid to sacrifice the god insulted, twisted the fabric of
the royal house until a monster was born, half man,
half bull, essentially an appetite with hoofs contain it. Mino's

(19:01):
turn to datalus, the mind that could fold a single
idea into a thousand rooms, and he did. The craftsman
gave the king a building shaped like a riddle. It
became known as the Labyrinth, a structure whose very logic
trapped you inside went the menotaur outside, a kingdom rearranged
itself around its deadly monstrous secret. So runs the version

(19:26):
most of us inherit, the Theseus Saga with Ariadne's thread,
a story that once thrilled me as a child. When
I read these stories for the first time many years
later in my classical studies class in high school would
also bore me prior to the bell ringing in the afternoon,
But fortunately my teenage boredom would be replaced by a
renewed awe for the mythologies of the ancient world, and today,

(19:50):
looking back in the oldest echoes of the story, the
labyrinth to me is not merely a prison. It's something
more similar to a choreography dance between myth and tradition,
an ancient monumental architecture. There are, of course, the accounts
from the ancient writers. Homer, for instance, speaks of datalists
building a dancing floor for Ariadne, a place where youths

(20:13):
and maidens unwind and rewind in steps that trace a
path without crossing it, but probing deeper for the origins
of the labyrinth. The very word may even whisper of
the labrius, the double axe sacred on crete, hinting that
the maze was once maybe a ritual precinct, a theater
of turns, where people met the divine by moving through

(20:35):
patterns they could not quite see from inside. From these
ancient steps and into the heart of the mystery, the
coils of the labyrinth unfurl. Cretan frescoes show athletes vaulting
over bulls in a ritual that looks like a dared
to gravity. The island minted coins centuries after the mythic age,

(20:56):
of course, stamped with a squared, meandering pattern that clearly
meantnossos to those who spent them. But across the Aegean mainland,
Greeks kept alive a crane dance the geranos that ancient
writers said theseus led after escaping the labyrinth the dancers,
following a winding course that remembered the way out looking elsewhere.

(21:18):
Rome took the story and tiled it in stone in
villas and bathhouses from North Africa to the Alps. Mosaics
present the labyrinth as a framed puzzle, a knot of
paths encasing a central scene where Theseus faced the bullheaded threat.
The message is blunt and political order over chaos, empire
over the wild. But the artistry, of course, is urbane.

(21:42):
A labyrinth, to the Romani, is a sign your cultured
enough to enjoy a good paradox. Then the Middle Ages
turned the symbol inward on cathedral floors, most famously at Chartrese.
A single path labyrinth invited pilgrims to walk a miniature
journey to Jerusalem when the real road was barred by
war or poverty. No dead ends, no monster, just one

(22:04):
continuous line that coils toward quiet. In this age, the
labyrinth became a prayer one could inhabit with the feet.
But a bit later, Renaissance allegorists recovered Theseus and Ariadne
and read them as treatises on reason and passion. Then,
centuries later the labyrinth wandered into psychology and literature. It
began to appear as the architecture of the mind that

(22:26):
you can't quite map, a metaphor for bureaucracy and for
wonder alike or Jess made it a library, whereas modern
cinema like Pan's Labyrinth made it a test. Video games
have also adopted the mythology, turning it into a habit.
But through virtually every adaptation of this time honored mythic
staple runs a double lesson that the Greeks would have

(22:48):
appreciated today that a path can shape a person, and
that a person armed with thread, wit and maybe companions
can also shape a path. So perhaps this week, in
an audio format, I intend to try and shape a
bit of a path towards trying to understand not only
the mythic dimensions of the ancient Labyrinth, but also the

(23:10):
very intriguing archaeological discoveries that suggest that the idea is
maybe more than myth after all, because it was at Nassos,
the sprawling Bronze Age complex that dominated Northern Crete, where
Sir Arthur Evans unfurled courtyards, stairwells, light wells, and storerooms
crossed by corridors like veins. He also found the material

(23:32):
of a cult, horns of consecration, double axes, and vivid
frescoes of bull leaping. Evans' later reconstructions and interpretations became
fairly grand, sometimes a little two grand. He saw a palace,
kun temple, and a queen's apartments, where modern scholars see
administrative suites, magazines and ritual spaces threaded through a political center.

(23:55):
But no one disputes the central sensation. Nassos is a
building that confus like a thought you keep losing in
the middle. If a society lived daily amid such complexity
and endanced ritual patterns within it, the seeds of a
labyrinth's story that eventually would make its way into mythology
hardly needs invention. There were also coins from classical nozzos

(24:17):
that reinforce the association, showing a tidy labyrinth pattern on
their faces. Caves and quarries on crete have likewise been
branded as candidates for the real labyrinth, including some very
intriguing recent discoveries which we'll be discussing later, but most
famously the maze like quarries near Gortyn. Pilgrims have been
getting lost there for two millennia, and ancient authors knew

(24:40):
of them as well. Yet material culture refuses to hand
us a plaque that reads, well, here be the minotaur's house. Instead,
we find something a little subtler, but nonetheless interesting, a
landscape of ritual and industry whose tangled forms, when filtered
through memory, produced the stuff myth and imagination. What about

(25:02):
that bull? Archaeologists do point to the prominence of cattle
in the Cretan religion and economy. Bull imagery, they say,
saturates the art, horns, and various other aspects of these
beasts can be seen as sorts of signposts of sacred
space in the ancient world. And the breathtaking bull leaping scenes,
whatever their exact function had been, dramatize a human encounter

(25:23):
with sheer power. Whether the practice was an acrobatic sport,
a rite of passage, or a pageant, it left an imprint.
Now fold that imprint into a story about a king,
a god, and a punishment, and the menotaur steps out
from the frescoes as an emblem that is half theology
and half theater. Well, modern perspectives, tempered by more than

(25:45):
a century of excavation and critique, have grown cautious about
turning these myths into maps that might lead us to
the remnants of a real underground maze. The labyrinth, we're told,
is better read as a cluster of meanings than a
single building hunt.

Speaker 5 (26:00):
It is an.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Architectural sensation, a ritual space, and a symbol stamped on money,
as well as a narrative technology, a kind of story
that teaches us how to navigate our own interferes in
the end. The story's power lies in its reversals. The
labyrinth begins as a space to keep a terror in,
but becomes a space to go through. The monster is slain,

(26:22):
but the more important victory is over confusion. Ariadne is
abandoned in some tellings, but her thread remains the indispensable tool,
an acknowledgment that no one navigates complexity alone. In short,
no matter what interpretations we apply today, the labyrinth keeps
doing what it always did. It asks you to move
forward without seeing the whole design, trusting that the path,

(26:44):
if you keep your nerve and mind, your thread will
eventually help turn you into the sort of person who
can find the center and then crucially find your way
back out. Now, as I mentioned, earlier as a child,
it was the great myths that got me into ideas
like there being being a labyrinth and the fascinating battles
between heroes like Theseus and monsters like the Minotaur. I

(27:07):
absolutely loved these stories as a kid, and also in
mye teen age years, no matter how bored I was
before the bell rang at three o'clock. But many years later,
as I would begin pursuing history and archaeology more seriously,
it became very fascinating to me the world traditions that
seemed to incorporate this idea of labyrinths. Because it wasn't

(27:27):
just the Greeks who had their traditions involving labyrinths. We
also had one in Egypt, which we'll hear about later,
and one that in many ways is as fascinating, if
not more so, than the one from Greece. And I
say that really to emphasize the fact that for a
symbol often associated with ancient Greece, the labyrinth has a
surprisingly global footprint. In fact, long before modern travelers would

(27:50):
try to trace its spiraling paths back to churches, gardens,
hospital courtyards, or a little more literally, for archaeologists, in
the underworld beneath crete. Yes, cultures around the world were
carving and painting and walking labyrinths of their own, and
often with really strikingly similar designs. These could be found
in the deserts of Arizona to the icy shores of

(28:11):
the White Sea. I've come across similar petroglyphs out there
while visiting vernal Utah, which we now associate with the
Fremont culture, but of course which bear a almost uncanny
resemblance to the kinds of things that we find in
Greece and Egypt and other parts of the world. In fact,
among the most compelling examples, arguably from outside Europe, is

(28:32):
the labyrinth of the Tohono o Odom people of the
American Southwest. Their design, known as the e eToy or
the Man in the Maize, shares the distinctive seven coarse
pattern familiar from ancient Cretan imagery, and yet the indigenous
version diverges also in a few ways its radial rather
than spiral, and its entrance sits at the top of
the figure rather than at the bottom. Still, some of

(28:54):
these similarities are a little too close to be ignored,
and while the oldest examples are different to date, most
researchers place their emergence around the seventeenth century, raising questions
about whether the patterns spread through cultural diffusion or if
they indeed did emerge independently. In my opinion, either scenario
is itself quite mysterious, but similar mysteries surround the labyrinths

(29:18):
of India. Claims of extremely early examples, such as petroglyphs
in Goa dated to around twenty five hundred BC, remain unsubstantiated,
but secure archaeological evidence does show labyrinths appearing in the
region by roughly two hundred and fifty BC. Many early
Indian labyrinths mirror the classical Cretan design as well, and
some may have even been intended as stylized maps of

(29:40):
fortified cities. Later manuscripts and tantric texts refer to labyrinths
as Chakravuya, invoking the elaborate battle formation described in the
famous Mahabarata. In early translations of al Baruni's India, even
the mythic city of Lanka is depicted as a maze
like stronghold. Farther to the north, labyrinths also dot the

(30:01):
rocky coasts of the White Sea The Solovetski Islands in particular,
preserve more than thirty known stone built examples. The best
known cluster, on Bolshoi Zayatsky Island contains a dense grouping
of thirteen labyrinths on a patch of land barely half
a square kilometer in size. Local archaeologists proposed dates of
around two thousand to three thousand years ago from many

(30:23):
of these, although some scholars also remain a little more cautious.
Bottom line, without any firm dating evidence, the age and
the purpose of these structures does remain somewhat open to debate.
But while labyrinths a pure worldwide, it's that classic Cretan
pattern that remains one of the most recognizable. It's a
seven course design stamped on ancient Cretan coins as early

(30:45):
as the fifth century BC, which may trace its origins
back as far as the Bronze Age. Roman artisans, as
mentioned earlier, also embraced this motif later on, embedding it
in floor mosaics throughout the Empire. Many of these intricate
designs feature four interlinked versions of the classical pattern and
often also include the minotaur. But then by the Middle Ages,

(31:05):
the labyrinth undergoes another transformation, because Europe's Gothic cathedrals adopt
their own for axis patterns, with the Chartrese cathedrals thirteenth
century labyrinth becoming really one of the most iconic. Its
elaborate path appears in manuscripts as early as the ninth century,
and though its precise purpose is unknown, these medieval accounts
that come down to us describe clergy performing ritual dances

(31:28):
along its winding course during Easter celebrations. In short, the
widespread appearance of labyrinths underscores their adaptability throughout the ages,
and again that just fascinates me. Whether I'm seeing them
in ancient petroglyss when I visit the American Southwest, or
they appear in textile patterns or cave art, or manuscripts
or monumental stonework from over the ages. Their meanings range

(31:49):
from spiritual maps and ritual devices to playful puzzles and
protective symbols. Sometimes these labyrinths served as a metaphor for
a fortified city, for others a symbolic journey toward enlightenment
or salvation. But for me, like so many others throughout
the ages seekers of ancient mysteries, it is also the
labyrinth that drives us to ask the question, but what

(32:12):
about archaeological discoveries? What if some of these stories aren't
necessarily just mythology. What if there is an actual archaeological
basis for some of these We're going to go in
that direction as we head further back in time right
here on the Micah Hanks program.

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(33:28):
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Speaker 1 (34:45):
Enter the labyrinth, Welcome back. This is one of those
enduring historical mysteries that bridges the gap between mythology and
of course archaeological mysteries. And if you now and then,
I know that listeners of this program enjoy our deep
dives into archaeology. In fact, for X subscribers, this week,

(35:08):
things will go a little deeper, maybe into the mythos
of the mind and what is known today as the psychomantium,
that itself an odd term borrowed from a much earlier
Greek expression. What does this have to do with why
people think they see specters? Well, we'll have an ex
podcast about that, and if you aren't already a subscriber,

(35:30):
pop on over to Micah Hanks dot com forward slash ax.
You'll find all the information that you need right there,
and for just seven dollars a month, you too can
become a subscriber. It not only supports my work, but
it also gets you additional weekly podcasts and the monthly
Enigmas specials. But that said, as we now get back
into this discussion and continue our pursuit toward the heart

(35:52):
of the Labyrinth mystery, the search for the Labyrinth, not
only as an idea, but as the actual location that
serves as the basis of this mythology is a fascinating
concept to me, and one of the reasons why is
because for centuries, travelers wandering across crete and other places
carried with him that question where was the Labyrinth of legend?

(36:16):
Ancient authors, of course, had spoken about this an underground
tangle of chambers built by Daedalus and a place so
confounding that even its creator barely escaped. And later, of course,
the medieval Pilgrims, the Renaissance, antiquarians, and even early modern
explorers all came to the island expecting the same thing,
that if they looked hard enough, once they arrived, they

(36:37):
might find the maze carved into the earth, the stone
riddle lying just beneath the sun beaten soil, that explained
the origins of the Greek mythology. Some would point to
natural caves near Gorton, others to winding tunnels in the hills,
each claiming to have located the dark coils where theseus

(36:57):
once walked, and yet every site proved incomplete, more suggestion
than certainty, and fueling a tradition of quests as old
as the myth itself. I want to share a bit
of insight about this from the website of the Ashmolean Museum,
in an essay they have titled looking for the Labyrinth,
where in the essay they note quote the Renaissance renewed

(37:19):
interest in Greece and its myths, resulting in a search
for the real Labyrinth. The Florentine priest Christoforo Buan del
Monte first visited Crete in fourteen fifteen and explored both
Nassos and Gortin. By this time there was little to
see at Nasso's It had been abandoned following an earthquake
in the eighth century CE, and certainly nothing there that
resembled the labyrinth. Of course, Buan del Monte, as they note,

(37:42):
did describe underground passages that he found there, and there
would be others who would also follow in the footsteps
of Buan del Monty Wolfganglisias, for instance, the sixteenth century
Austrian cartographer, But the debate over where exactly the labyrinth
was would continue for centuries thereafter, as the art or
here at the Ashmolean Museum website notes. In the nineteenth century,

(38:03):
Captain Thomas Spratt visited the caves at Gorton while surveying
crete for a new map of the island for the
British Admiralty. He described them as quote unquestionably a real labyrinth,
such as the ancients understood by that term unquote, and
wondered if King Minos had kept Athenians prisoners there. Then
there was the nineteenth century traveler Robert Pashley, who, despite

(38:24):
regarding the Labyrinth as a work of the imagination, kept
the faith with Nassos, despite the fact that it dwindled
down into a miserable hamlet. He wrote, the location of
Nassos had never been forgotten since coins of the city.
Of course, continued to be found there, and so was
The article notes the problem was that there was nothing
to see there for those going in search of the labyrinth,

(38:45):
but the argument was finally resolved in eighteen seventy eight,
they note, by a local businessman named, appropriately enough Minos Klakarinos.
Now it's important to emphasize that by the late nineteenth
century curiosity has grown into some thing closer to determination
from any of these searchers, and among the Cretans who
believed that the ancient palace still lay hidden was mister Klikaranos.

(39:09):
In addition to being a businessman, he was also an
amateurist scholar with a deep pride in the islands past,
and so in eighteen seventy eight, long before any foreign
archaeologists turned serious attention to crete, Kalakiaranos began digging at
a mound near the village of Kepfala, and what he
uncovered startled the world. He actually did find underground structures
which appeared to be store rooms of some kind. There

(39:31):
were fragments of vivid frescoes, the unmistakable footprint of an
immense Bronze age complex of some sort, and yet as
tantalizing as these discoveries were, his work was essentially halted
because the Ottoman authorities who occupied Creed at the time
prevented him from continuing. Still, this marks the first modern
recognition of the ruins, now synonymous with the Minoan civilization.

(39:54):
Well by the time Sir Arthur Evans arrives two decades later,
he follows the trail of Kalikaranos, but backed with a
whole lot more resources and manpower, and of course a
scholar's zeal for untangling pre Hellenic history. So Evans purchases
the land on top of the mound and launches one
of the most ambitious excavations of the era. As the
foundations of sprawling courtyards and staircases and halls emerged from

(40:16):
the earth, Evans became convinced that this site, initially discovered
by Kalikaraos was indeed the labyrinth itself, not a literal maze,
but a palace of sorts whose complexity he believed could
have inspired the ancient tale of a maze and its monster.
His reconstructions and interpretations, and the very naming of the Minoans,

(40:38):
of course, that derived from Minos helped to shape the
way the world came to understand the Bronze Age in crete.
But as is usually the case when it comes to
archaeology of this era, there's also a bit of controversy
here because, as was noted in twenty twenty three in
an article by the Guardian, there was a renewed effort
to recognize Kalakarenos for his role in the discovery of

(40:58):
the cythrea at Nassos. Quoting Andrew Chaplin, the Sir Arthur Evans,
Curator of Bronze Age and Classical Greece at the Ashmoleum
Museum in Oxford, he noted, we want to set the
story straight, adding that there are moves in Greece now
to give kali Karaos credit for the discovery. In twenty
nineteen they put up a bust at the entrance opposite
of the bust of Sir Arthur. They said that that

(41:20):
was a very important moment. So fortunately the man is
now many many years later, getting his due. And behind
Evan's fame there of course stands the quiet triumph of
mister Calikaranos. But behind both men stands a chain of travelers,
seekers and storytellers. Who have spent centuries searching for what
truth may exist behind this myth, only to discover that

(41:42):
the labyrinth in the end was not a single corridor
a cavern, but an entire civilization rising again from the dust.
Or was it really just that at all. We had
another really big story there at the debrief recently, which
involves a discovery from last year which is now receiving
even more attention because of how archaeologists are now referring

(42:04):
to it again. To quote one of them, they're saying
that this is potentially one of the most significant archaeological
discoveries of the twenty first century. I'm referring, of course,
to what was discovered in twenty twenty four during excavations
at the side of Papoora hill, where archaeologists unearthed a massive,
monumental circular structure that many are once again comparing directly

(42:27):
to the mythical subterranean domain of the Minotaur, as I
reported there at the debrief in the article. The discovery
of the structure was made last June during the construction
of a radar system for the new international airport of Heraklion. Crete.
Greek officials quickly decided that the potential significance of the
archaeological discovery superseded the construction plans for the airport, and

(42:47):
excavations of the unique structure were soon underway. Now, if
you look at photographs of this supposed new labyrinth discovery,
you might see why the building at Papora possesses a
very unique circular shape, one that some might say is
very obviously reminiscent of the famous labyrinth idea. Archaeologists involved

(43:08):
with the excavation sites really unlike any other similar structures,
at least known to prehistoric crete, although there are some
parallels in other parts of the world. Now, intriguingly, they
say the building is close to fifty meters in diameter,
it covers close to eighteen hundred meters, and that also
makes it a very large structure for that area and
for the period to which it has been dated. Then

(43:31):
within that primary circular structure are a series of eight
stone rings which appear at different elevations, with the largest
feature a great big circle component known as Zone A
that appears right in the middle. So the closest comparisons
between the crete and labyrinth structure and other known buildings
as far as their appearance are really the circular shapes

(43:51):
of some funerary buildings and residences associated with regions like Mesopotamia,
Oman and Syria, which also date to around the early
Bronze Age. But here we have something fairly similar that's
now being excavated on the island of Crete. So yet
again a lot of archaeologists are looking at this saying,
you know, whatever this thing is, it is arguably very

(44:11):
labyrinth like and it may indeed represent one of the
most important discoveries not only on that island but really
of the twenty first century. And so because of that,
the discovery of this new very enigmatic site recently garnered
enough attention that it received the Palmyra Award, and according
to Greece's Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni, apparently experts are

(44:32):
saying that quote, this find reshapes our understanding of Minoan archaeology.
So not only have we found something that isn't necessarily
easy to explain in terms of its similarity to buildings
in that area, it is something that is eerily similar
to the idea of the ancient Greek labyrinth. And it

(44:52):
very well may be that although archaeologists had the right
idea that hey, if we look on the island of Crete,
maybe we will find an archaeological peril to a mythic concept.
Maybe when they began looking, maybe when the initial discoveries
were made by Kalakaranos and Sir Evans, maybe they had
the right idea, but they were looking in the wrong place.

(45:13):
What if what they found or a superficial resemblance to
a labyrinth, because of course that's what they went there
hoping to find. And once they begin excavations, inevitably they
remove the earth and they say, sure enough, right where
we thought it was, we found something that at least
does a pretty good job resembling a labyrinth. All the while,
a short distance away there is a very unusual building,

(45:35):
a large circular structure eighteen hundred feet in proportion, and
something that even more closely resembles the labyrinth of ancient
Greek mythology. But of course, as I've already mentioned, ancient
Greece wasn't the only location where there was said to
be a labyrinth in the ancient world, and in fact,
as recorded in the writings of ancient historians. And so

(45:56):
when we return here in a moment, we're going to
shift our attention to ancient in Egypt and it's labyrinth.
As we wrap things up right here on the Micah
Hanks Program.

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same edition on eBay years later. There are certain books
that don't just give you information, they shift the way
you see the world. I remember reading one when I

(47:04):
was younger that completely changed me. Years later, I found
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edition back, not a reprint, not a different cover, that
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(47:25):
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Speaker 1 (48:16):
For more than two millennia, travelers crossing the Fayoum Oasis
told stories of a building so immense, so bewilderingly complex,
that even the great monuments of the Nile paled beside it.
Ancient writers called it the Egyptian Labyrinth, a sprawling complex

(48:37):
south of the Pyramid of Amenemhat the third that left
classical visitors awe struck, in which later generations pursued like
a mirage across the desert. Somewhere beneath the sands of Huara,
they believed, lay a structure whose chambers, shrines, and courtyards
once rivaled the legendary maze of Minos at Nassos Welcome Back.

(49:05):
So indeed, it is said that the ancient Egyptians had
their own labyrinth, and this comes to us, of course,
directly from the ancient historians who said to have seen it,
or it very least knew of its existence. Looking at
a few of these, Arguably the earliest major historian who
talks about the Egyptian labyrinth, funny enough, was a Greek author,
and of course I'm referring to Herodotus, who wrote, quote,

(49:27):
the Egyptians made a labyrinth which surpasses even the pyramids.
It has twelve roofed courts with doors facing each other,
six face north and six south into continuous lines, all
within one outer wall. There are also double sets of
chambers three thousand dollar together. That's quite a lot, fifteen
hundred above and the same number underground. The first historian

(49:49):
goes on to write that we learned through conversation about
the labyrinth's underground chambers. The Egyptian caretakers would by no
means show them as they were. They said, the burial
vaults kings who first built this labyrinth, and of the
sacred crocodiles the upper we solve for ourselves, and they
are creations greater than human. The exits of the chambers

(50:10):
and the mazy passages hither and thither through the courts
were an unending marvel to us. Over All this is
a roof made of stone like the walls, and the
walls are covered with cut figures, and every court is
set around with pillars of white stone, very precisely fitted together.
Near the corner where the labyrinth ends stands a pyramid
two hundred and forty feet high, on which great figures

(50:33):
are cut. A passage to this has been made underground. Indeed,
it's a very interesting description that Herodotus provides us. We
also have one from Strabo, and this comes to us
sometime later, several centuries later, in fact, where he writes
that quote. We have near Lake Moiers also the labyrinth,
a work equal to the pyramids, and adjoining to it

(50:53):
the tomb of the king who constructed the labyrinth. This
structure is a large palace, composed of as many palaces
as there were formerly nomes. At the end of this
building is the tomb, which is a quadrangular pyramid. The
name of the person buried there is amandis this king,
he writes, built the labyrinth with this number of all ie,

(51:13):
because it was the custom for all the nomes to
assemble there together according to their rank, with their own
priests and priestesses, for the purpose of performing sacrifices and
making offerings to the gods, and of administering justice in
matters of great importance. Well, that's where Strabo's account ends,
but skipping ahead to the first part of the first
century AD, then we also have Pomponius Mela, the Roman geographer,

(51:36):
who writes that quote. There is still an egypt A labyrinth,
which was, he maintains, the first constructed. He tells us
it had been built three thousand, six hundred years ago,
they say, by king Petasuchus or Tethois, although according to Herodotus,
the entire work was the production of no less than
twelve kings, the last of which was Samatikas. As to

(51:57):
the purpose for which it was built, many that it
was a building consecrated to the Sun, an opinion which
mostly prevails. A thing that surprises me is that the
building is constructed of Parian marble, while throughout the other
parts of it the columns are of synites. With such
solidity as this huge mass constructed that the lapse of
ages has been totally unable to destroy it. Seconded, as

(52:20):
it has been by the people of Heracleopolites, who have
marvelously ravaged a work which they have always held in abhorrence.
So based on these historic accounts, most scholars agree that
the labyrinth that's being referred to was probably built during
the reign of ominem Hat the Third, the Twelfth Dynasty
pharaoh who ruled around eighteen hundred BC. The king, who traditionally,

(52:43):
of course, is associated with the nearby pyramid in which
he was likely buried, appears to have commissioned a massive
complex adjoining his burial site. Later excavations there uncovered inscriptions
bearing the name of his daughter and successor that would
have been Sobac Nepheru, Egypt's first confirmed female pharaoh. Suggests
she added her own touches to the vast structure somewhere
along the way, but the precise function of the complex

(53:06):
in question remains a matter of debate. It was often
referred to, of course, as we know as a labyrinth.
Ancient descriptions hint at a monumental fusion of palace and
town center, administrative hub and ceremonial precinct. Wire Modern interpretations
propose that it was at least partially funerary, kind of
similar to the temple compounds that commonly flank Egyptian pyramids.

(53:27):
But whatever its use was, the so called labyrinth scale
is pretty unmistakable. A perimeter wall nearly four hundred meters long,
once enclosed a floor plan estimated at twenty eight thousand
square meters, an architectural statement of raw monastic power, but
also one that would have done a pretty good job
matching some of those ancient descriptions, the likes of which
were given to us by Herodotus. But this brings us

(53:49):
to the question of really what the structure looked like,
because the building itself was destroyed in antiquity, and we're
having to assemble these pieces based on accounts that were
left to us, but also, from time to time scattered masonry,
as well as uneven substructures, which sometimes complement the fragmentary
classical accounts. So when British archaeologist Flinders Petrie surveyed the

(54:09):
site in eighteen eighty eight, he identified what he believed
were nine shrines arranged behind rows of columns at a
series of courts divided by a great central hall. His
conclusions were informed by earlier classical texts, but constrained also
by the limited remains that were available to him at
that time. We also have the issue of conflicting reports

(54:30):
from antiquity, because we have accounts from those like the
Greek historian Diodora Siculus that describe things that present a
lot of problems, primarily because they don't really make architectural
sense in an Egyptian context. And so what this likely
echoes is the second hand accounts travelers tales, you might say,
rather than first hand observations. Plenty of the Elder's description

(54:52):
in Natural History slips a little further into confusion too,
because it attempts, perhaps a little too eagerly to merge
multiple differences sources into a coherent image of what the
labyrinth was supposed to resemble. But by the time these
writers encountered the structure, centuries of decay had already distorted
what they really saw. So according to archaeologists, they believe

(55:12):
that the western half of the labyrinth may have already
been dismantled by the Late Period or early Ptotamaic era,
and that based primarily on the presence of later Greco
Roman foundations built directly on top of where the remains
of the so called Labyrinth are believed to be the
eastern section, by contrast, might have been there a little longer.
In fact, it might have been there until as recently

(55:33):
as the Roman period, and that also happens to be
where some of the most impressive existing carved works, including sculptures,
are still found. But after the fall of the Western
Roman Empire, the Great Labyrinth, that once had been one
of the most admired structures in the ancient world, ended
up essentially becoming a quarry for stone. And of course,
when it comes to ancient Egyptian architecture, that's not really unusual.

(55:55):
Ancient monuments were often borrowed from or stolen from, and
the stone that once was used to build them was
repurposed for later structures, and so that essentially is what
happened with the Labyrinth. Too. Massive blocks ended up being
carted away and reused or maybe just lost throughout time,
and so ultimately the monument's footprint goes from being this
marvel of the ancient world to essentially fading from memory.

(56:19):
And yet even as the building was gradually disassembled by
time and also people needing resources, the legend at its
allure very much like the Cretan labyrinth would endure, And
so by the seventeenth century we have the French Jesuit
Claude Sicard, who proposed that the labyrinth was indeed still
there and that it lay at Hawara, and this essentially

(56:41):
revised those classical descriptions that we heard earlier of there
being a monumental temple complex that once existed there. Fast
forward to the early nineteenth century, where we see the
arrival of scholars who began to argue more directly that
the ruins south of aminem Hot the Third's Pyramid actually
matched ancient accounts of a labyrinth said to have existed there.

(57:02):
So a procession of researchers follows. We have the famous studies,
of course by Howard Weiss, John Shay Perring. We have
John Gardner Wilkinson in the eighteen forties. But then in
eighteen forty three Prussian egyptologist Carl Richard Lepsius conducts the
first serious excavations there at Huara, and the things that
he described were really fascinating. He uncovered brickline chambers right

(57:25):
there near the pyramid, and he essentially declares that he
has now found the labyrinth. Not everyone was convinced. Of course,
it comes back around to Flinders Peatree to push the
investigations even further, and by eighteen eighty eight, when he
returns to the site, he examines the chambers that Lepsius
first identified, and Peatree determines very much in contrast with

(57:46):
what Lepsius believed, that these weren't the remains of a
labyrinth at all. He determines these are the remains of
a later Greco Roman town that had been built over
where the labyrinth had been, and so through additional excavation,
Peatree manages to expose fragmentary foundations buried beneath the layers
of rebel what he believed again were the last physical

(58:06):
traces of that buried labyrinth. Among the finds that he
made were statues of Sobek Hathor, as well as granite
shrines containing images of aminem Hant the third and some
Roman era artifacts, including papyri inscribed with verses from the
Iliad and so to this day, really his work on
this subject, later published under the title The Labyrinth Gerza

(58:28):
and Masgune, still is one of the more substantial archaeological
records of the site, and really a lot of Petrie's
work remains extremely interesting reading for those who is fascinated
with these kinds of ancient riddles and the architecture that
complements these stories. But since Petre's excavation, there haven't been
really large scaled digs that resumed the Huara, and there

(58:50):
are a few reasons for that. It partially has to
do with the site's fragility, the rising water table that
threatens to erase what is still remaining there. That isn't
to say that there hasn't been some ongoing research at
the site, and in fact some that relates to non
invasive methods geophysical surveys using VLF, electromagnetic scanning, vertical electrical soundings,

(59:11):
electrical resistivity tomography. All these kinds of things allow archaeologists
to look underground without having to dig, and they have
revealed some interesting things, in fact, what some characterizes subsurface
anomalies consistent with buried chambers and walls. Those findings also
suggest that parts of the labyrinth's foundation may still exist

(59:32):
beneath the soil. With regard to the search for the
Egyptian Labyrinth and some of the subsurface anomalies, I would
also refer the listener to some of the very interesting
work by my friend Ben van Kirkwick, who recently appeared
on the Joe Rogan podcast talking about this, and he
spoke at the Cosmic Summit this year as well and
gave a lecture talking about some of the very intriguing

(59:55):
subsurface anomalies that are believed to be associated with the
Egyptian Lafe labyrinth. Side to me, this really begs some
very intriguing questions, and really not to give too much
away here because it might actually be worthwhile to have
Ben here on the show for a discussion. He's a
great guy and I always enjoy our conversations. But in
that appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Ben discusses something

(01:00:18):
that I heard him talking about earlier this year, involving
a very large structure of some sort that some of
the remote sensing technologies appear to have revealed in this
underground complex. It is and I think that this similarity
to a very famous UFO siding is entirely superficial, just
to be clear, but it is intriguing because it's been

(01:00:40):
described as a large metallic tic tac shaped object that
appears to be there underground and rather than being a
literal ufo trapped in an ancient underground labyrinth beneath the
Egyptian sands. I think, if anything, this probably points to
there having been some kind of monument there that if,
in the event, there were any future excavations that sought

(01:01:01):
to try and understand what exactly had once been there,
it might indeed afford archaeologists a much deeper perspective on
what the potential use of that site had been, what
indeed its purpose could have been, And that also might
help us to flesh out some of our understanding of
what the ancient writers referred to as being a labyrinth.

(01:01:22):
But of course for act subscribers, I want to go
a little deeper too, because there are other theories about
other labyrinths that might have existed in the ancient world,
and some modern scholars, through interpretive analysis of writings from
ancient Greece and also from ancient Egypt, have sought to
explore whether these labyrinths might not have served a very

(01:01:43):
intriguing purpose for the ancient mind. This would have effectively
been like going and speaking to the deceased a way
that the living could commune with the dead, and so
another very intriguing hidden chapter in the myth of surrounding
the labyrinth involved how modern psychologists and researchers have tried

(01:02:04):
to understand whether, indeed the ancient Greeks, through a process
of trying to commune with the dead, might have utilized
underground labyrinths and maybe also altered states of consciousness to
achieve things that the modern practitioner might view as a
kind of grief counseling or therapy, but which might also
help to shed light on some of the references in

(01:02:24):
the ancient Greek epics to the mythic heroes going and
speaking with oracles or oracles of the dead who could
commune directly with the spirit world. Of course, I'm referencing
some of the work by doctor Raymond Moody and others
over the years who have borrowed terminology from the ancient
Greek world like Necromantean to give rise to the modern

(01:02:44):
concept of the so called psychomanteum. And if you've never
heard of a psychomanteum, what that is and how this
might relate to the ancient Greek idea of labyrinths. It
is indeed a fascinating rabbit hole. It will be diving
down for ex subscribers. But as we wrap things up here,
the Egyptian Labyrinth has never really maybe enjoyed the fame

(01:03:04):
of those in the ancient Greek tradition, yet ancient writers,
of course, considered it no less extraordinary. Take those examples
from Herodotus and others, Herodotus claiming it surpassed the Pyramids
in its grandeur. Roman historians treated it as one of
the marvels of the world, and although its columns and
halls and shrines have long since vanished, the ancient Egyptian Labyrinth,

(01:03:26):
like the one in Greece, seems to be something that
has remained on the minds of travelers for centuries, and
it remains enigmatic enough that it also makes its way
onto popular podcasts like Joe Rogan's as well as mine,
and that helps to ensure that its legacy continues to
shape our understanding of the ancient world. I love these mysteries,

(01:03:47):
and I hope but discussing them and also their archaeological counterparts,
offers a bit of a repast from this mad, mad
world in which we live. So as always, we're wrapping
things up for the here and now. Will return you guys,
take care, and as always stay strange out there,