Minotaur

The Minotaur (Greek Μινώταυρος ) is a figure in Greek mythology, a creature with a human body and a bull's head.

Mythology

Minos, son of Zeus, who lived on the island of Crete, surrounded by the sea, asked his uncle, the sea god Poseidon, to allow him to obtain the kingship and to deter other claimants to the throne a miracle. He vowed, whatever entstiege the sea to sacrifice to God. Poseidon then sent him a magnificent bull, and Minos was king of Crete. However, the bull liked it so much that he took him into his fold, and instead offered a lower quality animal.

Poseidon was angry and struck Minos ' wife Pasiphae with the desire to unite with the bull. She let Daedalus build a wooden frame, which was covered with cowhide. In it she hid herself and settled so copulate by the bull. As a fruit of this union she gave birth Asterios: a man-eating monster, just the Minotaur ( Minosstier ).

Minos was for the animal being that he actually wanted to kill ( begat this but also from the misstep of his wife ), at the request of his daughter Ariadne, who wanted to keep him alive, by Daedalus build a prison in the form of a labyrinth.

The bull itself was tamed by Heracles as part of his " work pay " and brought to the Peloponnese. There, taught the savage beast to great harm. Androgeos, one of Minos ' sons, wanted to test his skill in fighting the bull, but this fell victim. When Minos heard the news, he embarked on a campaign of revenge against Athens; as the story goes, King Aegeus of Attica have Androgeos sent to the animal. With the help of his father Zeus the Cretan king who defeated the Athenians and ordered them a cruel toll on: All nine years, she had to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete, where they are so that were sent into the labyrinth of the Minotaur and sacrificed.

Finally solved Theseus - the son of Aegeus, and later his successor as ruler - the problem, he made ​​himself with the third tribute ride on the way to kill the monster. Minos ' daughter, fell in love with the hero and helped him with its famous Ariadne's thread. According to another story, they should have also given him strange pills from pitch and hair, which had to be thrown into the jaws of the Minotaur. It is also said that it had itself accompanies the hero to light his way with her wreath in the dark; jewelry - perhaps a gift from her admirer Dionysus - was later set among the constellations. Theseus defeated the Minotaur and found using the thread back out of the labyrinth. With Ariadne, the young men and women he made himself at night on the way home; before he hit another the bottoms of the Cretan ships.

To punish Minos was the architect Daedalus, together with his son Ikaros lock in the maze. Some said namely that it was Daedalus ' notice was to unroll the thread from the entrance. However, Daedalus knew the outcome. In order to escape from the island, he built for himself and his son wings; he himself escaped with the help of this swing, but Ikaros fell into the sea.

Art and History

As a historical template for the maze is considered the palace of Knossos, a multi-storey building complex with a complex architecture.

The Minotaur is up to the present, a popular motif of the visual arts. Famous are the only examples of Picasso. Representations of a hybrid creature with a bull's head and a human body can already be found on relics of the Minoan civilization of Crete. In Max Ernst's great sculpture from 1948, Capricorn, forms a the Minotaur -like figure the center of the work.

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

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