Minotaur

Pasiphae and the Minotaur, Attic - red-figure kylix of Settecamini Painter , 340-320 v. BC, Cabinet des Médailles , Paris .

Silver drachma of Knossos , Crete, ca. 425-360 v. Chr.

Theseus and the Minotaur, Attic red-figure plate by Paseas , 520–510 BC BC, Louvre

The Minotaur (also Minotaur , ancient Greek Μινώταυρος Minṓtauros , Latin Minotaur , German Minotaur ) is a figure in Greek mythology : a being with a human body and a bull's head.

mythology

Minos , a son of Zeus and Europa , who lived on the island of Crete , asked his uncle, the sea god Poseidon , to grant him a miracle in order to gain the royal dignity and to deter other aspirants to the throne. He vowed to sacrifice whatever arises from the sea to God. Poseidon then sent him a magnificent bull , and Minos became king of Crete. However, he liked the bull so much that he accepted it into his herd and sacrificed an inferior animal instead.

Poseidon got angry and struck Minos' wife Pasiphaë with the desire to unite with the bull. She had Daidalos build a wooden frame for her that was covered with cowhide. In it she hid herself and allowed the bull to mate her. As the fruit of this union, she gave birth to the Minotaur (Minos bull) with the name "Asterios". Minos had Daidalos build a prison in the form of a labyrinth for the hybrid beings .

When Minos received the news that his son Androgeos had been killed by the help of King Aigeus of Athens , he embarked on a campaign of revenge against Athens. He was able to defeat the Athenians and imposed a cruel toll on them: every nine years they had to send seven young men and seven virgins to Crete, where they were sent into the labyrinth of the Minotaur and thus sacrificed to him.

Depiction of the death of the Minotaur on an Etruscan amphora by the Castellani painter .

Finally, Theseus - son of Aigeus and later his successor as ruler - solved the problem by setting out on the third tribute journey himself to kill the monster. Minos' daughter Ariadne fell in love with the hero and helped him with her Ariadne thread .

According to another story, she is also said to have given him strange pills made of bad luck and hair that had to be thrown into the Minotaur's throat. It is also said that she herself accompanied the hero to shine with her wreath in the darkness; the jewelry - perhaps a gift from her admirer Dionysus - was later placed under the constellations.

Theseus defeated the Minotaur and found his way out of the labyrinth with the help of the thread. With Ariadne, the young men and virgins, he set off on the journey home.

As a punishment, Minos had the architect Daidalus and his son Ikaros locked in the labyrinth. Some said that it was Daidalos' tip to unwind the thread from the entrance. Daidalus, however, knew the outcome. To escape from the island he built wings for himself and his son; he himself was able to escape with the help of these wings, but Icarus fell into the sea.

Art and history

The palace complex of Knossos , a multi-storey building ensemble with complex architecture, is the historical template for the labyrinth .

The Minotaur is a popular motif in the visual arts to this day . Representations of a hybrid creature with a bull's head and human body can already be found on relics of the Minoan culture of Crete. The saga of the Minotaur with Theseus, Ariadne and Dionysus is also a popular motif of the frescoes in ancient Pompeii . A famous minotauromachy comes from Picasso . In Max Ernst's large sculpture, Capricorn , from 1948, a figure similar to the Minotaur forms the focus of the work.

In literature, Friedrich Dürrenmatt has reinterpreted the Minotaur in his ballad of the same name: From a man-eating monster, he becomes a victim of obscure circumstances and a symbol of contemporary disorientation. The Minotaur is the first-person narrator in The House of Asterion by Jorge Luis Borges .

literature

Kirsten Dickhaut: Minotaur. In: Maria Moog-Grünewald (Ed.): Mythenrezeption. The ancient mythology in literature, music and art from the beginnings to the present (= Der Neue Pauly . Supplements. Volume 5). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02032-1 , pp. 433-435.
Johannes Hugo Helbig : Minotaur . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, Col. 3004-3011 ( digitized version ).
Alfred Scheidegger (ed. And epilogue): Picasso: "Minotauros". 30 graphic sheets. Insel, Frankfurt 1963 and more often, most recently in 1996, ISBN 3-458-08789-3 .

Web links

Commons : Minotaurs - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: Minotauros - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

↑ Bibliotheke of Apollodor 3,1,3-4
↑ Bibliotheke of Apollodor 3,1,4; Hyginus , Fabulae 40
↑ Diodorus Siculus , Bibliotheca historia 4.61
↑ ^a ^b Hyginus, Fabulae 42; Plutarch , Theseus 19
↑ The afterword of 53 pages deals with the myth. Furthermore, an overview of the exhibition of Picasso's cycle up to 1962.

[1] Bibliotheke of Apollodor 3,1,3-4

[2] Bibliotheke of Apollodor 3,1,4; Hyginus , Fabulae 40

[3] Diodorus Siculus , Bibliotheca historia 4.61

[hf-4] Hyginus, Fabulae 42; Plutarch , Theseus 19

[5] The afterword of 53 pages deals with the myth. Furthermore, an overview of the exhibition of Picasso's cycle up to 1962.