When we turn from our native bowers to the Aegean _labyrinthos_, transmitted practically intact from the ancient Greek to most modern European languages, we are venturing on dangerous ground indeed, for the derivation of this word has been the subject of much disputation between rival schools of etymologists and philologists in recent years. Down to a few decades ago we were content with the bald statement of most dictionaries that it was probably correlated with the word _laura_, meaning a passage, or mine,[5] though there was also a suggestion that it might be of Egyptian origin, viz., that it was derived from the name of Labaris (= Senusret III), erroneously conceived by the scribe Manetho to be the founder of the Hawara pile. Then Mr. Max Mayer put forward the suggestion that it might have some connection with _labrys_, a word which, in some of the early languages of Asia Minor, _e.g._, Lydia and Caria, denoted an axe, the axe being the symbol associated with the god known as Zeus Labrandeus or Zeus Stratios, the worship of whom was known to have taken place at Labranda, in Caria. Coins from Mylasa, a neighbouring town, show this god holding in his hand a double axe. [5] "Coil-of-rope walk" according to Ruskin (_Fors Clav._). The stir created by the discovery of double axes in abundance, with every indication of their religious and symbolic use, during the course of Sir Arthur Evans's explorations in the traditional home of the Cretan labyrinth, can therefore be well understood. As a consequence thereof every self-respecting dictionary nowadays gives pre-eminence to the _labrys_ derivation of "labyrinth." At the same time it is well to bear in mind that many learned scholars have seen great difficulty in accepting this theory, mainly on account of the metathesis, or change-over, of the _r_ and the _y_ (_u_ in Greek), which was stated to be unexampled, and to the addition of the termination _-inthos_. With regard to the latter it now seems to be generally agreed among scholars that this termination occurs only in words which were assimilated from the pre-existing peoples of the Aegean lands, whom the Greeks, as northern invading hordes, overcame and superseded. The suffix is preserved only, however, in extremely few common nouns (_terebinthos_ = the turpentine tree, _asaminthos_ = a bathing-place), and in a similarly small number of place-names, such as _Tirynthos_ (Tiryns) and _Corinthos_ (Corinth). It is the equivalent of the ending _-nda_ in certain place-names in Asia Minor, _e.g._, _Labranda_. The conjectures that the word was connected with _labros_, meaning "great," or that it was derived from the old Egyptian _la-pe-ro-hunt_, "the temple at the mouth of the reservoir," are hardly worth repeating.