About halfway along the court were found two small
rooms, connected with one another, in the centre of each of which
stood a single column composed of four gypsum blocks, each block
marked with the sign of the Double Axe; and these pillars suggested
a connection with ancient traditions about Minos and his works
(Plate XI.). They were apparently sacred emblems connected with
the worship of a divinity, and the Double Axe markings pointed
to the divinity in question. For the special emblem of the Cretan
Zeus (and also apparently of the female divinity of whom Zeus was
the successor) was the Double Axe, a weapon of which numerous votive
specimens in bronze have been found in the cave-sanctuary of Dicte,
the fabled birthplace of the god. And the name of the Double Axe
is Labrys--a word found also in the title of the Carian Zeus, Zeus
of Labraunda. But tradition linked the names of Minos and Knossos
with a great and wonderful structure of Daedalus which went by the
name of the Labyrinth; and the coincidence between that name and
the Labrys marks on the sacred pillars and on many of the blocks
in the palace at once suggested that here was the source of the
old tradition, and here the actual building, the Labyrinth, which
Daedalus reared for his great master. 'There can be little remaining
doubt,' says Dr.
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