archaicwonder: Silver Stater minted at Knossos, Crete c. 500-431 BC On the coin is the Minotaur runn
archaicwonder:Silver Stater minted at Knossos, Crete c. 500-431 BCOn the coin is the Minotaur running, holding an unidentified object in his raised hand. The inscription KNOSI[ON] is beside him. On the reverse is the Labyrinth in the shape of a clockwise swastika with a floral pattern in the center and sunken squares in the four corners.This coin is one of the earliest from Cnossus (Knossos), a city on the northern coast of the island. Not surprisingly, its designs derive from the city’s most famous mythological episode, the Minotaur in the labyrinth. The Minotaur had the body of a man and the head of a bull – a predictable composition for a creature born of an intimate encounter between a bull and Pasiphae, the wife of the Cretan King Minos. The Minotaur was kept by Minos in a specially constructed labyrinth at Cnossus and was fed with condemned criminals, maidens and young boys sent from Athens as tribute to the Cretan king. It has been noted that the Phoenician Baal Moloch shared the form of the Minotaur and likewise fed on human sacrifice victims. -- source link
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