It used to be supposed that the Cretan labyrinth had taken its name from the Egyptian one, and the, word itself was supposed to be of Egyptian origin.  An Egyptian etymology was found for it as “Ro-pi-ro-henet,” “Temple-mouth-canal,” which might be interpreted, with some violence to Egyptian construction, as “The temple at the mouth of the canal,” i.e. the Bahr Yusuf, which enters the Fayyum at Hawara.  But unluckily this word would have been pronounced by the natives of the vicinity as “Elphilahune,” which is not very much like

[Illustration:  126.jpg (Greek word)]

“Ro-pi-ro-henet” is, in fact, a mere figment of the philological imagination, and cannot be proved ever to have existed.  The element Ro-henet, “canal-mouth” (according to the local pronunciation of the Fayyum and Middle Egypt, called La-hune), is genuine; it is the origin of the modern Illahun (el-Lahun), which is situated at the “canal-mouth.”  However, now that we know that the word labyrinth can be explained satisfactorily with the help of Karian, as evidently of Greek (pre-Aryan) origin, and as evidently the original name of the Knossian labyrinth, it is obvious that there is no need to seek a far-fetched explanation of the word in Egypt, and to suppose that the Greeks called the Cretan labyrinth after the Egyptian one.

The contrary is evidently the case.  Greek visitors to Egypt found a resemblance between the great Egyptian building, with its numerous halls and corridors, vast in extent, and the Knossian palace.  Even if very little of the latter was visible in the classical period, as seems possible, yet the site seems always to have been kept holy and free from later building till Roman times, and we know that the tradition of the mazy halls and corridors of the labyrinth was always clear, and was evidently based on a vivid reminiscence.  Actually, one of the most prominent characteristics of the Knossian palace is its mazy and labyrinthine system of passages and chambers.  The parallel between the two buildings, which originally caused the Greek visitors to give the pyramid-temple of Hawara the name of “labyrinth,” has been traced still further.  The white limestone walls and the shining portals of “Parian marble,” described by Strabo as characteristic of the Egyptian labyrinth, have been compared with the shining white selenite or gypsum used at Knossos, and certain general resemblances between the Greek architecture of the Minoan age and the almost contemporary Egyptian architecture of the XIIth Dynasty have been pointed out.* Such resemblances may go to swell the amount of evidence already known, which tells us that there was a close connection between Egyptian and Minoan art and civilization, established at least as early as 2500 B.C.