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like the loops of the intestine" (Jaskolski, 45). The ritual consisted of drawing such a labyrinthine figure upon a bronze dish that was to be filled with Saffron and water from the Ganges River. It was believed that when the woman in labor drank from the dish, the information provided by the diagram would reach the child via the water and thus guide him through the passageway to birth.
The Hopi Indians of North America have long viewed the labyrinth as a symbol of Mother Earth and of birth and rebirth from her. Similarly, the aborigines of Australia incorporated incised spiral designs in the sacred "churingas" or "tjurungas" that they created. These objects are described as "slabs of wood or stone within which the spiritual body of the ‘eternal uncreated’ ancestor ... was distributed when he touched the earth. They contained the souls of the unborn, and their presence in the waterhole, rock, or tree, which was the point of divine entry into this world, caused passing women to conceive"(Bord, 144).
Although several examples, including the ones previously mentioned, associate labyrinths and spirals with physical birth, scholars have interpreted both symbols as being "maps of the underworld, and symbolic of death. The ingoing movement ... indicates death, the outgoing rebirth" (Bord, 10). The labyrinthine spirals evident at numerous Neolithic temples, tombs, and hypogea again represent the concept that "in death one returns to the earth, the mother, from which one is eventually reborn. The presence of the labyrinth at burial structures signifies a ritual entry into the earth" (Bord, 10).
The Neolithic passage grave of New Grange, near the river Boyne in Ireland, has been described as "both a house of the dead and a place of rebirth" as "the iconography of its art encompasses life, death, and regeneration" (Streep, 114). The tomb is located within a rock mound that is 45 feet high and 265 feet in diameter. The central chamber rises to a height of almost 20 feet, and the structure of the narrow passage leading to it requires intermittent stooping by visitors. This aspect of the inner sanctuary having been difficult to reach, which is a very labyrinthine characteristic, recalls the same aspect shared by the sacred Paleolithic caves.
Referred to as "the cave of the sun", New Grange features a passage to the tomb whose entrance is aligned with the point of the rising sun of the midwinter solstice. On this day, sunlight enters the passage and, aided by a carefully designed slit in the roof, illuminates the interior chamber, the bones it houses, and the incised symbol of a triple spiral that is prominently displayed upon the chamber’s far wall. Among other symbols, numerous single and double spirals cover the tomb’s interior walls, as well as the curbstone at the entrance, denoting the site’s identification as a place of death and rebirth.
Another example from the Neolithic period is that of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, a rock-cut necropolis, or city of the dead, located on the Island of Malta. Originating in the fourth millenium, the bones of approximately seven thousand people were interred over a period of eleven hundred years in its labyrinthine catacombs, the lowest level of which lie some thirty feet below the surface. Scholars