The Legacy of an Ancient Civilization
Vanishes
Before Our Eyes
By LINDA ENEIX
The value of the megalithic temples of Malta is beyond estimation. Predating Stonehenge, the palaces of Crete and King Solomon's Temple, they are an incredible one thousand years older than the pyramids at Giza. They are, in fact, considered to be the earliest freestanding stone monuments and the oldest space-enclosing architecture still in existence. How sad to think that in 200 years since the first excavations, we have lost so much of them. Unique and irreplaceable artistic expression which has lain silently undisturbed for five and six thousand years is disappearing, almost as we watch, from the effects of wind and rain, salt and pollutants. Pristine settings are being lost to modern buildings and commerce. As in Egypt, in Greece, in Israel - the elements of today's world are eating away at the treasures of the past.
The temples are amazing feats of engineering, even by the standards of today. In these very structures: site planning, retaining walls, corbelling, the launch of a horizontal arch, the earliest use of forecourts -- all are demonstrations of the birth of architecture in the Maltese Archipelago. Within the temples stone benches are decorated with carved parades of sheep and goats. Fish and birds, a sow suckling her piglets, a bull in bas relief, a four-sided "tree of life", and the rolling waves of the sea adorn haunting interior spaces. The people who built the temples left behind a physical legacy of a time of peace and spiritual communion with the Mother Earth which has been called the purest and most impressive in the world. For more than a thousand years, the Neolithic "temple people" lived in harmony with their surroundings: weaving fine fabric, grinding grain, harvesting crops, tending domesticated animals, and communing with their goddess. They had buttons and they had furniture. They did not have metal tools, wheels or weapons. They decorated pottery and sanctuary alike with the red ochre color of life and the cyclical spirals of unending turning: daylight and darkness, summer and winter, birth and death and regeneration. This was the "fertility cult" of prehistoric Malta -- successful for centuries and then suddenly gone without a trace by the time of Abraham, ca. 2,500 B.C.E.
The first formal excavations were carried out in 1827 at the ruins of Ggantija temple on the Maltese island of Gozo. In 1829, a German artist, Von Brocktorff, painted a series of watercolors of the site. An examination of these paintings, which are now kept at the Malta Library in Valletta, clearly shows traces of plaster and red pigment on the towering curved walls. Huge blocks of stone were decorated with intricate carvings in relief. Remarkably preserved for nearly 6,000 years, the decoration is mostly gone now. Fragile stone surfaces have eroded away in less than two centuries.
It's the same story at the other 20 or so known temple sites on the islands of Malta and Gozo. Even in the short span since the writer's first encounter with the temples in 1990, the losses have been obvious and staggering. Watching the encroachment of the twentieth century, one has to wonder what will be left by the end of the twenty-first.
When the Tarxien complex was uncovered in 1915, its vast array of carvings, friezes and decorated stone were shown to be the most intact of anything thus far discovered from the period. Decades followed before the finest of the monoliths were moved to the shelter of the National Museum of Archaeology and replaced with on-site replicas. There is a large difference between the sharp clarity of early in-situ photographs and the patterning on the originals today. But these individual stones are safe for now. What does remain of them is stunning. We cannot, however, move the temples.
As if the natural elements weren't destructive enough, modern humankind has been less than respectful of these ancient sacred places. New housing construction, industrialization, vandalism and tourist transgression have all taken tremendous tolls. Among the most atrocious violations was a twentieth-century decision to quarry hard- stone "marble" from the rock on which one of the most unique historic monuments sits.
In a 1977 article entitled "Murder at Mnajdra", Maltese architect and poet Richard England writes about the temple of the same name: "...this collection of megalithic stones constitutes one of the finest architectural and archaeological monuments of the Neolithic period to be found anywhere in the world. Dating probably earlier than 4,000 B.C., this curvilinear complex nestles cozily into the silent earth, recalling and evoking the soft undulating curves of its weather-beaten surrounding embodiment. With a magical air of mysticism the whole man-made organisation is absorbed in an umbilical relationship of containment within the totality of the site and environment, as if to echo its builders' respect and involvement with Earth as the Great Mother. In a parched thyme-thronged landscape, unchanged in millennia of sun-washed centuries one could study our ancestors' attachment to specific landmarks and features read as manifest body forms of their matriarchal nutritious goddess. Mnajdra is the sole remaining example of Megalithic Malta which stands unperturbed and undisturbed by the sub-sequent indelible marks of superimposed later civilisations. ALAS! NO LONGER SO!"
In a heartfelt appeal, Professor England continues: "Future generations will not forgive us easily! It is for us to guard Malta in trust for our children, for it is the lasting testament of over five thousand years of ethnic history.... The heritage of our land is the common heritage of each and every one of us." (Original publication: "The Times of Malta")
We have a dream.
Plans are in the making to protect Malta's incomparable architectura heritage. Until scientists can discover a safe and effective treatment for the stones, the temples will be covered with transparent domes, beginning at a new archaeological park under development by the National Tourism Organisation of Malta and the Museums Department. Students of architecture will reconstruct a life-size replica of Mnajdra Temple which will give visitors a real sense of the magnificence of the structures when they we re intact -- long ancient ages in the past.
It won't be easy.
Funding has to be found.
Government agencies must be dealt with.
Local gamesmen and residents will have to be placated.
Planning and consultation, architectural and engineering analysis, and long
hours of
meticulous research will be required.
But we can do it.
Please contact The OTS Foundation if you'd like to help us.
E-mail to Linda Eneix.