Daedalus designed and built the Labyrinth in the Greek myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. The structure was commissioned by King Minos of Crete to contain the Minotaur, the hybrid child of Minos’s household and the Cretan Bull.
Daedalus was famous as an ingenious Athenian craftsman and inventor. Greek myth also credits him with making the wooden cow that enabled Pasiphae to approach the bull, although the Labyrinth was his most celebrated architectural creation. Its confusing passages were intended to make escape nearly impossible.
A common mix-up is confusing Daedalus with Icarus. Icarus was Daedalus’s son, and the two later escaped Crete using wings made by Daedalus. Icarus did not design the Labyrinth, and the myths do not describe him as its builder.
Ancient accounts differ in detail about the Labyrinth’s exact form and location. Later tradition associated it with Knossos, but archaeology has not demonstrated that the palace complex was literally the mythical maze.