The Knossos Labyrinth: A New View of the 'Palace of Minos' at Knossos by Castleden, Rodney

The Knossos Labyrinth: A New View of the 'Palace of Minos' at Knossos, Castleden, Rodney. Published by Routledge, New York, USA, 1990. First Edition. 8vo up to 9½" tall; xii., 205 pp. with 20 black and white plates, chapter title illustrations, 54 line drawings. Brown boards with gilt spine titles; illustrated endpapers showing the Temple floor plans. Both volume and unclipped jacket are in mint, as new condition.

Knossos, like the Acropolis or Stonehenge, is a symbol for an entire culture. The Knossos Labyrinth was first built in the reign of a Middle Kingdom Egyptian pharaoh, and was from the start the focus of a glittering and exotic culture. Homer left elusive clues about the Knossian court and when the lost site of Knossos gradually re-emerged from obscurity in the nineteenth century, the first excavators - Minos Kalokairinos, Heinrich Schliemann, and Arthur Evans - were predisposed to see the site through the eyes of the classical authors. … Castleden puts forward alternative interpretations - that the building was a necropolis or a temple - and argues that the temple interpretation is the most satisfactory in the light of modern archaeological knowledge about Minoan Crete.