The Myth of the Minotaur by Angus

Last week we went to the island of Crete, which is between mainland Greece and Africa! We went to a palace called Knossos where the minotaur supposedly used to live. The minotaur was a beast that was half-man and half-bull. I'm going to tell you about the myth of the minotaur in this post. But first here is a sculpture of him, my mom took this picture at a museum in Athens:

One day, the prince of Athens, Theseus, got very mad because every year the Cretan king, King Minos, would have seven young men and seven young women from Athens go into his labyrinth where the minotaur lived. The minotaur would eat them and they couldn't escape because the labyrinth was a maze and it was difficult to find your way out. Theseus decided he would replace one of the young men and kill the minotaur. He set off with black sails on his ship. Why he did this was because he had told his father that if he came back with black sails he had not been victorious. If he came back with white sails then had had been victorious. So he sailed off to Crete.

All seven men and seven women were presented in front of King Minos, the princess Araidne and the Queen. Ariadne fell madly in love with Theseus. When they were waiting in line for the labyrinth, Ariadne gave Theseus a spool of string and a sword. Theseus then went into the maze and laid down the string as he went and then he killed the Minotaur and then followed the string back out with all the other men and women. Once he did this he told King Minos he could not feed any more Athenians to the minotaur. Then he sailed back home. When his dad looked out at the horizon, he saw that Theseus' ship still had black sails. In his excitement, he had forgotten to put up the white sails. Theseus' dad was so sad he jumped off a cliff because of Theseus' carelessness. 

 

 The true history is that there was no minotaur only bull-leaping at the palace and probably some young men and women from Athens die in the sport. Here are photos from the remains of the palace where King Minos supposedly lived, and a picture of the bull that they worshipped there. Now we are on the island of Tinos and I will tell you more about that later. I hope you all enjoyed my story. Post back.