Day of the Minotaur

PREFACE

In 1952, when the young cryptographer, Michael Ventris, announced his partial decipherment of the clay tablets found in the ruins of Knossos, archaeologists, linguists, and laymen greeted his announcement with enthusiasm and expectation. Since the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans at the turn of the century, the island of the fabulous Sea Kings had piqued the imagination with its snake-goddesses and bull games, labyrinths and man-killing Minotaurs. But instead of a Cretan Iliad, the tablets revealed a commonplace inventory of palace furniture and foodstuffs, with occasional names of a town, a god, or a goddess. In a word, they confirmed the already accepted facts that the ancient Cretans had lived comfortably, worshiped conscientiously, and kept elaborate records. Those who had hoped for an epic, a tragedy, or a history—in short, for a work of literature to rival the Cretan achievements in architecture and fresco painting—were severely disappointed.

In 1960, however, an American expedition from Florida Midland University excavated a cave on the southern coast of Crete near the ancient town of Phaestus and discovered a long scroll of papyrus, sealed in a copper chest from the depredations of thieves and weather. I myself commanded that expedition and wrote the article which announced our find to the public. At the time of my article, we had barely begun to decipher the scroll, which I prematurely announced to be the world’s earliest novel, the fanciful story of a war between men and monsters. But as we progressed with our decipherment, we marveled at the accurate historical framework, the detailed descriptions of flora and fauna, the painstaking fidelity to fact in costume and custom. We began to ask ourselves: Were we dealing, after all, with a novel, a fabrication, a fantasy? Then, last year, in the same cave, one of my colleagues discovered an intaglio seal ring of lapis lazuli which depicted a field of crocuses, a blue monkey, and a young girl of grave and delicate beauty. The discovery gave us pause: The identical ring had been described in the scroll, and its faithfully-rendered subjects, the monkey and the girl, were both participants in the so-called War of the Beasts.

My colleagues and I are scholars, objective and factual— the least romantic of men. We do not make extravagant claims. We do suggest, however, that our manuscript, instead of the world’s first novel, is one of its first histories, an authentic record of several months in the Late Minoan Period soon after the year 1500 B.C., when the forests of Crete were luxuriant with oak and cedars and ruled by a race who called themselves the Beasts. We realize that the consequences of such a suggestion are breathtaking and may, in time, necessitate a complete reexamination of classical mythology, since many of our so-called “myths” may in fact be sober history. What is more, folklorists may find in the scroll the prototype for a famous fairy tale long believed to have originated in the Middle Ages. Now, with considerable doubts and a rare, unscholarly excitement, we present to you the first English text of the manuscript which we have designated Day of the Minotaur. Wherever possible, proper names have been modernized for the convenience of the layman.

T.I. Montasque, Ph. D., Sc.D., L.L.D.

Florida Midland University,

July 29, 1964.