Daedalus Icarus' wings, Daedalus is portrayed assisting in the creation of something that has subsequent negative consequences, in this case with his creation of the monstrous Minotaur's almost impenetrable Labyrinth, which made slaying the beast an endeavour of legendary difficulty. The most familiar literary telling explaining Daedalus' wings is a late one, that of Ovid: in his "Metamorphoses" (VIII:183–235) Daedalus was shut up in a tower to prevent the knowledge of his Labyrinth from spreading to the public. He could not leave Crete by sea, as the king kept a strict watch on all vessels, permitting none to sail without being
Labyrinth be walked. Unicursal patterns have been used historically both in group ritual and for private meditation, and are increasingly found for therapeutic use in hospitals and hospices. "Labyrinth" is a word of pre-Greek origin, which the Greeks associated with the palace of Knossos in Crete, excavated by Arthur Evans early in the 20th century. The word appears in a Linear B inscription as da-pu-ri-to. As early as 1892 Maximilian Mayer suggested that "labyrinthos" might derive from "labrys", a Lydian word for "double-bladed axe". Evans suggested that the palace at Knossos was the original labyrinth, and since the double axe motif