Tell Rifa'at Labyrinth Pottery

Labyrinth-decorated pottery fragments from Tell Rifa'at, the ancient city of Arpad in northern Syria — a powerful Aramaean city-state conquered by Tiglath-Pileser III in 740 BCE. The labyrinth motif, tentatively dated to 1200 BCE, would make this among the earliest known labyrinth representations outside Crete, though the disturbed archaeological context leaves the dating debated. The site sits 903 km from Giza at bearing 35.49° — positioning it on the ancient corridor connecting Mesopotamia to Egypt via the Levant.