1693

The Italian traveller Gemelli-Careri visits Egypt , the land of the Pharaohs, describing a subterranean labyrinth:

“… the Arabs conducted us to see a Labyrinth, where the Ancients bury’d Birds. We went down a narrow Passage into a Room out of which we crept on our Bellies through a Hole to certain ways where a man may walk well enough upright. On both sides of these there are Urns, in which the Birds were bury‘d; there is now nothing in them but a little dust. These Ways are cut out of a nitrous Stone, and run several miles like a City under ground, which they call a Labyrinth.”

Early Antique Woodcut Published 1544-1628 for the “Cosmographia” 
by Sebastian Munster. Courtesy of www.albion-prints.com