Walking on the labyrinth in North Africa and Iberia

A discussion of labyrinth mosaics focusing on their context and location, emphasizing the experience of the viewer moving across the surface. Particular attention is paid to North African mosaics within baths, where sporting activities such as wrestling recall Theseus’s defeat of the Minotaur after his arrival at the centre of the Cretan labyrinth. The main mosaics discussed are those from the Baths of Hippo Regius at Annaba (Algeria), the Great East Baths at Mactar (Tunisia), and the Baths of the Labyrinth at Thuburbo Maius (Tunisia). These are contrasted with labyrinths from Iberia, none of which is found in baths. Two labyrinths from the peristyle of the Casa dos Repuxos, and small threshold mosaics with labyrinths in the Casa de Cantaber, all at Conimbriga (Portugal), are discussed with particular reference to the significance of their location.