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An a-maze-ing history
Writers have used the living maze, a tall hedge gone haywire, as settings for romances and mysteries. In the real world, modern mazes are relatively safe places for fun and small-scale adventures. The planners of outdoor facilities know that these mazes attract adults and children alike. Some are evergreen. Some, like the one at Temple Hall Farm, are temporary, appearing in the fall when corn stalks are perfect for maze construction.Mazes, however, have a history as labyrinthine as their construction. According to the Web’s UnMuseum, the first recorded maze was the Egyptian Labyrinth. Herodotus, a Greek writer, visited the Egyptian Labyrinth in the fifth century, B.C. He reported that 12 kings from 12 kingdoms, determined that the world would remember them, united and built Arsinoe, a temple maze.
The entire building was surrounded by a wall and contained 12 courts with 3,000 chambers. The roof of the temple was composed of stone and the walls were covered with sculpture. On one side of the labyrinth was a pyramid 243 feet high. The temple was in two levels with half of the rooms above ground and the rest below. The keepers and guides for this temple helped Herodotus through the upper part of the labyrinth, but refused to allow him to view the underground portions. He was told that the rooms below contained the bodies of the kings that constructed the temple and the tombs of sacred crocodiles.
But the Roman Empire declined and the Middle Ages gained strength. For some reason, the designers of Christian churches began to include labyrinths in the art on the walls or inlaid on the floor. According to the UnMuseum, no one is sure why this happened.
The oldest-known church labyrinth is at the Basilica of Reparatus at Orleansville, Algeria, and dates from the fourth century A.D.
England’s churches were the exception. These Christians did not want mazes to be part of their places of worship. However, the people did develop a maze unique to the island kingdom -- turf mazes. These mazes can still be found in or just outside villages across the countryside. They range from 25 feet across to more than 80 feet in diameter.
A strange cousin to turf mazes, but located on the other side of the world, are the Nasca lines. The lines are located on a high plain in Peru and were built between 200 B.C. and 300 A.D. They form huge geometric shapes and pictures that can only be appreciated from the air.
UnMuseum says the earliest evidence for a topiary maze appears in 13th century Belgium. By the 16th century the hedge maze had spread to England as a landscape painting by Tintoretto. In the later part of the 17th century, King Louis XIV had a labyrinth constructed as a part of the gardens at Versailles. This maze included 39 groups of hydraulic statuary representing the fables of Aesop. Each of the characters who appeared to be speaking emitted a stream of water, representing speech.
Perhaps the most famous hedge maze that still exists today, UnMuseum continues, is the Hampton Court maze in England. It is of no great size, only occupying a quarter of an acre, but has been very popular through its long history since 1690.
Finally, mazes are often used in laboratory experiments to test a subject's ability to learn and remember; however, the most common maze is probably still found in the desks of middle school students who slog through teachers’ long-winded lectures by putting pencil to paper and creating mazes for their friends to solve.
Contact the writer at ecarlton@timespapers.com.
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