Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders

by T. Eric Peet

In the still more famous temple of Hagiar Kim we have a complicated building, in which the original plan has been much altered and enlarged. The main portion doubtless consisted originally of a curved façade and a pair of elliptical areas, the inner of which has been fitted with a second entrance to the north-west and completely remodelled at its south-west end. Four elliptical chambers, one of which is at a much higher level than the rest of the building, have been added. Here, too, as at Mnaidra, we find niches containing trilithon tables. In the first elliptical area, in which the apsidal ends are divided from the central space by means of walls of vertical slabs, a remarkable group of objects was found. In front of a well-cut vertical block stood what must be an altar, cut in one piece of stone. It is square in section except for the top, which is circular. On the four vertical edges are pilasters in relief, and in the front between these is cut in relief what looks like a plant growing out of a pot or box. To the left of the altar and the vertical slab behind were an upright stone with two hanging spirals cut on it in relief, and at its foot a horizontal slab. Both the altar and the carved stone are covered with small pit-marks.

In the outside wall of the building, quite unconnected with the interior, is a niche partly restored on old foundations, in which stands a rough stone pillar 6½ feet high. In front of this pillar is a vertical slab nearly 3 feet high, narrowing towards the base, and covered with pit-markings. This pillar can hardly be anything but a baetyl, or sacred stone.

The temple called the Gigantia, on the island of Gozo, is no less remarkable than the two which we have already described; in one place its wall is preserved up to a height of over 20 feet. The plan is similar to that of Mnaidra, though here the two halves seem to have been built at one and the same time. Several of the blocks show a design of spirals in relief, while on others there are the usual pit-markings. Another bears a figure of a fish or serpent. At the foot of one of the trilithons was found a baetyl 51 inches in height, now in the museum at Valletta.

That these three buildings were sanctuaries of some kind seems almost certain from their form and arrangement. We do not, however, know what was the exact nature of the worship carried on in them, though there can be no doubt that the stone tables supported by single pillars and the trilithons found in the niches played an important part in the ritual. Sir Arthur Evans in his famous article Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult has suggested that in Malta we have a cult similar to that seen in the Mycenæan world. This latter was an aneiconic worship developed out of the cult of the dead; in it the deity or hero was represented by a baetyl, i.e. a tree or pillar sometimes standing free, sometimes placed in a 'dolmen-like' cell or shrine, in which latter case the pillar often served to support the roof of the shrine. In Malta Sir Arthur Evans sees signs of a baetyl-worship very similar to this. Thus at Hagiar Kim we have a pillar still standing free in a niche, and another pillar, which, to judge from its shape, must have stood free, was found in the Gigantia. On the other hand, at Mnaidra we have pillars which support slabs in a cell or shrine, and at Cordin several small pillars were found which must originally have served a similar purpose.

There can hardly be any doubt that Sir Arthur Evans is right in seeing in the Maltese temples signs of a baetylic worship. But is he right in his further assertion that the cult was a cult of the dead? Albert Mayr assumes that he is, and endeavours to show that the 'dolmen-like' cells in the niches are not altars, but stereotyped representations of the dolmen-tombs of the heroes worshipped. He thinks that the slabs which cover them are too large for altar-tables, and that the niches in which they stand are too narrow and inaccessible to have been the scene of sacrificial rites. Neither of these arguments has much force, nor is it easy to see how the cells are derived from dolmens. The fact is that the word 'dolmen-like,' which has become current coin in archæological phraseology, is a question-begging epithet. The Maltese cells are not like dolmens at all, they are either trilithons or tables resting on a pillar. They are always open to the front, and instead of the rough unhewn block which should cover a dolmen they are roofed with a well-squared slab. If the pillar which supports the slab is, like the free-standing pillars, a baetyl, the slab is probably a mere roof to cover and protect it; if not, the slab is almost certainly a table.

At the same time, although we may not accept the hypothesis that the cell is derived from a dolmen, Sir Arthur Evans may still be right in supposing the worship to have originated in a cult of the dead. But he was almost certainly wrong, as recent excavation has shown, in supposing that the cells were the actual burial place of the deified heroes.

A number of statuettes were found at Hagiar Kim, two of which are of pottery and the rest of limestone. One figure represents a woman standing, but in the rest she is seated on a rather low stool with her feet tucked under her. There is no sign of clothing, except on one figure which shows a long shirt and a plain bodice with very low neck. All these statuettes are characterized by what is known as steatopygy, that is, the over-development of the fat which lies on and behind the hips and thighs.

Steatopygous figures have been found in many places, viz. France, Malta, Crete, the Cyclades, Greece, Thessaly, Servia, Transylvania, Poland, Egypt, and the Italian colony of Eritrea on the Red Sea. The French examples are from caves of the palæolithic period; the rest mainly belong to the neolithic and bronze ages. Various reasons have been given for the abnormal appearance of these figures. In the first place it has been suggested that they represent women of a steatopygous type, like the modern Bushwomen, and that this race was in early days widely diffused in the Mediterranean and in South Europe. Another hypothesis is that they represent not a truly steatopygous type of women, but only an abnormally fat type. A third suggestion is that they portray the generative aspect of nature in the form of a pregnant goddess.

Naturally there are considerable local differences in the shapes of the figures from the various countries we have enumerated, and it may be that no single hypothesis will explain them all.

There are other megalithic buildings in Malta besides the three which we have discussed, but none of them call for more than passing mention. On the heights of Cordin or Corradino, overlooking the Grand Harbour of Valletta, there are no less than three groups, all of which have been lately excavated. In all three we see signs of the typical arrangement of elliptical areas one behind another, and in the finest of the three the curved façade and the paved court which lies before it are still preserved.