Day of the Minotaur

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Thomas Burnett Swann. Day of the Minotaur

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TO AUNT LITTLELY,

In 1960, however, an American expedition from Florida Midland University excavated a cave on the southern coast of Crete near the ancient town of Phaestus and discovered a long scroll of papyrus, sealed in a copper chest from the depredations of thieves and weather. I myself commanded that expedition and wrote the article which announced our find to the public. At the time of my article, we had barely begun to decipher the scroll, which I prematurely announced to be the world’s earliest novel, the fanciful story of a war between men and monsters. But as we progressed with our decipherment, we marveled at the accurate historical framework, the detailed descriptions of flora and fauna, the painstaking fidelity to fact in costume and custom. We began to ask ourselves: Were we dealing, after all, with a novel, a fabrication, a fantasy? Then, last year, in the same cave, one of my colleagues discovered an intaglio seal ring of lapis lazuli which depicted a field of crocuses, a blue monkey, and a young girl of grave and delicate beauty. The discovery gave us pause: The identical ring had been described in the scroll, and its faithfully-rendered subjects, the monkey and the girl, were both participants in the so-called War of the Beasts.

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And then, cupped in the arms of the old, white-haired mountains, lay a green forest, its single egress a narrow strip of the south which faced toward the rich Messara Valley and the great city of Phaestus.

The Country of the Beasts.

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