In the Greek myth of the Minotaur, what kind of creature was the Minotaur?

The Minotaur was a bull-headed man in the Greek myth of the Labyrinth. Ancient descriptions present him as a creature with a human body and the head of a bull, rather than as an ordinary bull or a fully animal monster.

The name Minotaur comes from Greek words meaning “Bull of Minos.” The creature was also called Asterion, or Asterius, in ancient mythographic tradition. He was associated with King Minos of Crete because Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, gave birth to him after an extraordinary union with the Cretan Bull.

King Minos ordered Daedalus to construct the Labyrinth to contain the Minotaur. The creature’s hybrid form made him one of the most recognizable monsters in Greek mythology, and later art often emphasized a muscular human torso joined to a bull’s head and neck.

Modern depictions sometimes add horns, hooves, or a completely bovine body. Those features vary artistically, but the defining traditional combination is human body plus bull’s head.