Image Details

Photo by Harf Zimmerman

The architect Daedelus (second from right), his son Icarus (far right) and Queen Pasiphae (far left), the wife of Crete’s king Minos, are depicted in this 10-foot-long, second-century A.D. mosaic from Zeugma. In Greek myth, Pasiphae mates with a bull, giving birth to the half-human, half-bovine Minotaur. King Minos then commissions Daedelus to build the Labyrinth to imprison the beast, which is fed with a yearly tribute of 14 Athenian maidens and youths. Most of the Zeugma mosaics depict scenes from mythology, much like the better-known mosaics from Antioch; they may even have been created by master artisans from that city.