This article is about the maze-like structure from Greek mythology.
In colloquial English, labyrinth is generally synonymous with maze.
Herodotus' Egyptian labyrinth
Even more generally, labyrinth might be applied to any extremely complicated maze-like structure. Herodotus, in Book II of his Histories, describes as a "labyrinth" a building complex in Egypt, "near the place called the City of Crocodiles," that he considered to surpass the pyramids in its astonishing ambition:The Egyptian labyrinth was so named by the Greeks after the legendary complex of meandering halls designed by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete (wherein the Minotaur dwelt). Herodotus wrote of the Labyrinth in the fifth century B.C. (History, 2.148-49):