Labyrinth: Knossos Myth & Reality

This book accompanies the Ashmolean exhibition Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth & Reality.

It traces the 9,000 year history of a place which became famous in Greek myth as the palace of King Minos and home of the Minotaur. It follows the early travellers looking for the Labyrinth, culminating in the discovery of the site by Minos Kalokairinos and its subsequent excavation by Sir Arthur Evans.

It brings the story up-to-date with important recent discoveries in the Knossos area by archaeologists from Greece and abroad. Over 30 expert contributors, including excavators and museum curators, examine Knossos from a variety of different angles and present some of the spectacular finds made over the course of nearly 150 years of archaeological research in the area. Labyrinth provides an invaluable guide to the mythology, archaeology and history of one of the most famous archaeological sites in Greece.

Dr Andrew Shapland is Sir Arthur Evans Curator of Bronze Age and Classical Greece at the Ashmolean Museum and a Supernumerary Fellow in Archaeology at Jesus College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Human-Animal Relations in Bronze Age Crete: A History through Objects and was co-curator of the 2019 British Museum exhibition Troy: Myth and Reality.