Skotino Cave – the “Labyrinth of the Minotaur”

Skotino Cave and the image of the labyrinth

Skotino Cave lies about 1.2 kilometres north-west of the village of Skotino in the municipality of Hersonissos, only a few kilometres inland from Gouves and some twenty kilometres east of Heraklion, at a height of roughly 225 metres. From the village it is about half an hour on foot. The entrance opens at the bottom of a broad, green karst sinkhole, where part of the roof collapsed long ago and left an arch 27 metres wide and 10 metres high; steps lead down into an underworld of several levels and halls, in which stalactites and stalagmites grow together in the half-light into columns, curtains and enigmatic shapes. The name is apt: skotino means simply “dark”. Because of this winding subterranean space the cave is often described to visitors as the “Labyrinth of the Minotaur”. That is a figurative comparison with the famous Cretan myth, not evidence that the palace of Minos stood here.

An ancient sanctuary in underground halls

Skotino served as a sanctuary from Minoan times – from about 1900 BC, in the Middle Minoan period – and the traces of human presence go back further still. The official excavations – first soundings by Arthur Evans and John Pendlebury in 1933, a further campaign by Faure twenty years later, and then the systematic investigation by the Greek archaeologist Kostis Davaras in 1962 – document unbroken use from the Late Neolithic, that is the 5th millennium BC, through the Middle and Late Minoan periods and the Protogeometric age of the 11th to 9th centuries BC down to the Roman Empire. Sherds of pottery, bone needles, bronze statuettes of Late Minoan date and numerous votive offerings in bronze and clay came to light, many of them left at the foot of the great stalagmites.

Scholars connect the later forms of the cult with a female deity of fertility, presumably the Cretan Britomartis, the “sweet maiden”, whose figure merged in Classical and Roman times with Artemis and finally with the Roman Diana. At least two, perhaps three, basins had been hollowed out of the dripstone, and in these the worshippers probably cleansed their hands ritually before going further in; a number of the formations show signs of having been chiselled and shaped in antiquity. The name of the original Minoan deity cannot, of course, be determined with certainty; it is therefore more accurate to speak of the cave’s sacred purpose enduring over millennia than to assign it to a single god. It is this continuity that makes Skotino a key site in the history of Cretan religion.

Layout of the cave and visiting

The cave extends over an area of about 2,500 square metres; the whole system of passages measures some 450 metres, and over four descending levels it reaches a depth of about 160 metres. The largest hall, the so-called “Great Temple”, is some 126 metres long, 33 metres wide and in places up to 30 metres high; two giant stalagmites, 8 and 11 metres tall, rise from its floor. Next comes the “Altar Chamber”, about 24 metres long and a good eight metres wide, in whose floor gapes a fissure into which oil, milk, wine and the blood of sacrifices were presumably poured in antiquity. To the left of the first hall a low chamber some 15 metres long, the “adyton”, is reached by a drop of about six metres. Deeper still, about fifty metres below the level of the entrance, lies a further cult room, a domed, roughly circular hall some twelve metres across that is partly flooded in winter; it is complemented by a small “Prayer Hall” of 7.5 by 5 metres, ringed with columns of dripstone, and a narrow chamber about 12.5 metres long that the researchers call the Chapel, where the stones of a vanished church are said to lie. Some of the formations suggest a huge animal – a crouching bear, it is usually said – and beside it a human head: figures in which earlier visitors doubtless recognised a divine presence, the bear being an animal of Artemis.

An ordinary visit is confined to the safe entrance area and the first great hall. The deeper sections, with narrow squeezes, wet, slippery rock and steep descents, call for caving experience, good lighting and proper equipment. There is no tourist infrastructure in the way of handrails or lighting, and no gate or ticket office either: the cave stands open and unattended. Stout shoes and a powerful torch – better two – are therefore indispensable, and it is unwise to go down alone. Sadly, graffiti on the formations and the traces of illicit digging have taken their toll on the cave in recent decades – all the more reason not to touch the dripstone and to leave no trace whatever.

The chapel of St Paraskevi

At the entrance to the cave stands the chapel of St Paraskevi, and right beside it can be seen the ruins of an older Christian church, which is dated to the period of Venetian rule, probably the 16th century. Tradition relates that it was built on the wreckage of a still older place of worship. The Christian chapel did not wipe out the ancient memory of the place but transformed it: the cave remained a space of prayer, of pilgrimage and of encounter with the holy.

Nature and religious memory

The significance of the cave is not exhausted by the beauty of its dripstone. It shows with unusual clarity how a natural space could become a sanctuary: water, darkness, echo and strange forms of stone created an atmosphere in which the divine seemed to reveal itself. From the offerings of the New Stone Age through the votive gifts to Britomartis to the candles that burn today before the icon of St Paraskevi stretches an arc of some seven thousand years. It is this union of nature and religious memory that has made Skotino one of the most celebrated sacred caves of Crete – and a place where the long history of the island can quite literally be touched, provided one does so with care.