Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 178, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1920 — ANCIENT MARVEL OF EGVPT [ARTICLE]

ANCIENT MARVEL OF EGVPT

NorrisiT Jj Labyrinth Constructed Some 3,500 — >Y Wrtr A gb Wte f of Colossal Size. King Minos, with his labyrinth on . the Island of Crete, is generally supposed to have been the originator of I the maze Idea; but Egypt has a labyrinth, toe, and Egypt manages to hold the record for antiquity to almost everything, labyrinths included, .Thijs. Egyptian labyrinth is 3,500 years old." It is merely a chaotic mass of rocks piled up in the desert a few । miles out of Medinet. The outlines of r the Walls merge dimly here and there from the ruins, and from these outlines, and the carvings on the stones, Egyptologists deduce that the laby-• rlnth was built by a certain King Labarys, who was. more popularly known as Amenemhat 111. The structure was 500 by 600 feet' It contained 3,000 rooms, half above ■ ground, half below. Remember that the largest hotel in dur present day world boasts about that number of rooms on. a dozen floods and covers to. city square, and some idea of the size of the two-story labyrinth. can be gained. Nobody has figured out yet why King Amenemhat built this enormous palace or tomb. In the lower.story, history says, the, sacred crocodiles and kings were burled, while the upper floor was, a few centuries after King Amenemhat’s time, used as a seat of government. The labyrinth was a wonderful place, one of the most wonderful In Egypt, if our ideas of it are correct, and its: greatness was its downfall. P The citizens of a near-by town, who worshiped the Ichneumon, resented,, the sacred crocodiles -qf the labyrinth. And sb they made an attack upon one of King Amenemhat’s successors and reduced the . largest structure in Egypt to a ruin.