340 pliny's NATUEAL HISTOET. [Book XXXVI. 



whom was Psammeticlius. As to the purpose for which it 

 was built, there are various opinions : Demoteles says that it 

 was the palace of King Moteris, and Lyceas that it was the tomb 

 of Moeris, while many others assert that it was a building 

 consecrated to the Sun, an opinion which mostly prevails. 



That Daedalus took this for the model of the Labyrinth 

 which he constructed in Crete, there can be no doubt ; though 

 he only reproduced the hundredth part of it, that portion, 

 namely, which encloses circuitous passages, windings, and 

 inextricable galleries which lead to and fro. We must not, 

 comparing this last to what we see delineated on our mosaic 

 pavements, or to the mazes^^ formed in the fields for the 

 amusement of children, suppose it to be a narrow promenade 

 along which we may walk for many miles together ; but we 

 must picture to ourselves a building filled with numerous 

 doors, and galleries which continually mislead the visitor, 

 bringing him back, after all his wanderings, to the spot from 

 which he first set out. This*^ Labyrinth is the second, that of 

 Egypt being the first. There is a third in the Isle of 

 Lemnos, and a fourth in Italy. 



They are all of them covered with arched roofs of polished 

 stone ; at the entrance, too, of the Egyptian Labyrinth, a thing 

 that surprises me, the building is constructed of Parian marble, 

 while throughout the other parts of it the columns are of 

 syenites.*^ With such solidity is this huge mass constructed, 

 that the lapse of ages has been totally unable to destroy it, 

 seconded as it has been by the people of Heracleopolites, who 

 have marvellously ravaged a work which they have always 

 held in abhorrence. To detail the position of this work and 

 the various portions of it is quite impossible, it being sub- 



*3 Similar, probably, to the one at Hampton Court. 



** Most modern writers, and some of the ancients, have altogether de- 

 nied the existence of the Cretan Labyrinth ; but, judging from the testi- 

 mony of Tournefort and Cockerell, it is most probable that it really did 

 exist, and that it was a vast natural grotto or cavern, enlarged and made 

 additionally intricate by human ingenuity. There are many caverns of 

 this nature in Crete, and one near Gortyna, at Hagios-Deka, is replete with 

 galleries and intricate windings similar to those ascribed to the Labyrinth 

 of Daedalus. 



*5 See Chapter 13 of this Book. He is surprised that the people of 

 Egypt, a country which abounded in exquisite marbles, should have used 

 that uf another country in preference to their own. 



