20 June 2001
After the cart-ruts Chris drove us up to a hilltop named Salib ta Gholia with a view over the twin cities of Rabat and Mdina. The hill was crowned by a sixteenth-century church built out of beautiful limestone ashlars, which glowed gold in the afternoon light. On its wall was a notice in Latin stating that the right of sanctuary formerly accorded to fugitives taking refuge there had been withdrawn. The church seemed closed, its windows and doors boarded up.
‘Come on,’ said Chris, beckoning that we should follow. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’
He led us along a zigzag footpath that ran down the side of the hill beneath the church until we came to what seemed to be the mouth of a cave. Blocking our way further was an uncompromisingly locked, thick-barred steel gate.
Chris gestured between the bars: ‘Take a look in there,’ he suggested. ‘I think you’ll find it very weird.’
I did. It was.
‘What is it? I asked.
‘Nobody knows for sure. The official view is that it was made by early Christians – that it could have been some sort of secret church. But a lot of stuff they can’t explain here gets attributed to the early Christians.’
I was peering through the bars. What I could make out in the shadowy recesses beyond seemed to be a roughly circular, very high chamber. And in the centre of the chamber, standing on a broad base, were huge tapering pillars soaring up into the gloom above. Room, walkway, pillars and ceiling were all carved out of the solid bedrock of the hillside. Chris was still talking: ‘Here in Malta once the archaeologists say something is early Christian then everyone stops thinking about it.’
‘Obviously you don’t think it’s early Christian.’
‘Do you know, a few years ago there were exceptionally heavy rains. A lot of water pooled on the flat ground up above at the top of the hill. Then suddenly a very strange hole opened in the ground and the same moment a huge pile of rubble dropped through into this chamber. It took a week to clear it out. But it wasn’t a natural collapse. The hole turned out to be a triangular man-made shaft, with each side of the triangle measuring about half a metre, and it ran vertically about 20 metres through the ceiling of the chamber and all the way to the top of the hill. It had been blocked and filled up over time …’
‘So …’
‘So I just don’t see any reason why early Christians – or any Christians -would have gone to the trouble to make something like that. What it sounds like to me is ancient astronomy.’
I nodded. Such a shaft, like any vertical shaft, would have marked the biannual zenith passage of the sun – here with a spectacular glowing triangle at midday on the floor of the chamber. And it would have made a splendid fixed telescope at night for observing stars at the zenith.
But what also interested me was the further hint that the shaft and the chamber offered of advanced rock-cutting and tunnelling abilities amongst the ancient Maltese – abilities of which the Hypogeum may only represent a fraction. Indeed, there have long been rumours that a vast network of tunnels and passageways of unknown origin exists beneath Malta. And at the beginning of World War II, soon before the islands came under heavy attack from the German and Italian Air Forces, a rather odd report from a gung-ho American cyclist named Richard Walter appeared in the obsessively fact-checked National Geographic magazine. After describing the Hypogeum (‘where prehistoric man worshipped his deities and buried his dead’) Walter wrote:
While we cycled homeward, our friends told us that the island was honeycombed with a network of underground passages, many of them catacombs. Years ago one could walk underground from one end of Malta to another, but all entrances were closed up by the Government because of a tragedy. On a sightseeing trip, comparable to a nature-study trip in our own schools, a number of elementary school children and their teachers descended into the tunnelled maze and did not return. For weeks mothers declared that they had heard wailing and screaming from underground. But numerous excavations and searching parties brought no trace of the lost souls. After three weeks they were finally given up for dead. Sections of the underground network have been used to protect military and naval supplies. Indeed many of the fortifications themselves are merely caps atop a maze of tunnels …5
Just another urban legend? Or another tantalizing glimpse of Malta’s prehistoric underworld?
The pendulum of the sun
Mnajdra, 20 June 2000
Chris Micallef is around thirty years of age, stocky and dark, quite intense, a typical Maltese. He’s wearing a smart white shirt, open at the neck. He has a slightly professorial air, as though teaching comes naturally to him or is often expected of him. And he knows a lot about astronomy. At our first meeting in November 1999 he and his father – the late Paul Micallef’s brother – showed me a film they had been preparing for more than a decade which meticulously documents the impressive array of alignments that the massive Lower Temple of Mnjadra has on offer at different seasons of the year.
I look at my watch. It’s already 5.50 a.m.
‘Don’t worry,’ says Chris. ‘We won’t see the effect for about another twenty minutes.’ He points to the long sloping shoulder of the hill to our east, at the top of which Hagar Qim is located. ‘Of course, nothing happens until the sun’s disk begins to appear over the ridge.’
‘So this isn’t exactly a sunrise alignment, then?’
‘No. It’s much more clever and complicated than that. If the local horizon were completely flat, which it pretty much is up at Hagar Qim, the sun’s disk would have already been in view for more than half an hour. But because we’re at the bottom of a hill and the hill lies east of us, we don’t see it down here yet. So all the sunrise alignments for Mnajdra had to be calculated and observed by the ancients against this sloping local horizon – not an easy thing to do.’
But, nevertheless, a thing that was done. What happens is this:
As the sun crests the horizon on the spring and autumn equinoxes, 21 March and 21 September (when night and day are of equal length) its rays exactly bisect the huge trilithion entrance to Mnajdra’s Lower Temple, projecting a spot of light into a small shrine in the deepest recesses of the megalithic complex.
On the winter solstice (20/21 December, the shortest day) a very distinctive ‘slit-image’ – looking something like the illuminated silhouette of a poleaxe or a flag flying on a pole – is projected by the sun’s rays on to a large stone slab, estimated to weigh 2.5 tonnes,6 standing to the rear of the west wall of the Lower Temple’s northern apse.
On the summer solstice (20/21 June, the longest day), the same distinctive slit-image appears – but now with the ‘flag’ oriented in the opposite direction – on a second large stone slab, this time weighing 1.6 tonnes standing to the rear of the west wall of the Lower Temple’s southern apse.
‘And it works like that,’ Chris Micallef continues, ‘like a pendulum, sweeping left to right, then right to left, back and forward throughout the year: summer solstice image to autumn equinox to winter solstice image, back to the spring equinox, then to the summer solstice image again and the cycle starts over. There are further subdivisions also signalled by slit images for the cross-quarter days, mid-way between the solstices and the equinoxes, and for the “eighth days” mid-way between the cross-quarter days and the equinoxes on one side and between the cross-quarter days and the solstices on the other.’
Between the winter and summer solstices, the rays of the rising sun act like a pendulum swinging between the north and south vertical stones (shaded) inside the temple. On the equinoxes, the sun shines straight along Mnajdra’s east-west axis. Based on Micallef (1992).
Chris tells me about other alignments, notably some very precise lunar alignments that the temple also registers: ‘All in all, when we consider the high precision of Mnajdra’s alignments, and the many astronomical problems that were solved – way beyond what is required if the only objective was a simple agricultural calendar – we have to conclude that ful
l-time professional observers must have been at work here for many, many years. Then you have to think about the problems of site-selection – and then many more years patiently observing to establish the required back-sights.’7
‘So these guys were pretty sharp observers?’
‘They were,’ said Chris. ‘And pretty sharp surveyors too.’
‘And good engineers,’ I added. ‘They knew how to move and position the big megaliths.’
‘And they had mathematical and measuring abilities … Come and see this … ‘
Chris leads me up the slope to the small, south-facing trefoil temple on the northern side of the site, presumed to be the oldest in the Mnajdra complex. On the basis of exclusively Gigantija-phase pottery excavated here, it has been dated to c.3450 BC (as against c.2800 BC for the Lower Temple where mainly Tarxien-phase pottery was found). But Chris doesn’t want to talk about dates. He wants to talk about ellipses.
‘I’ve studied the elliptical forms of the temples mathematically,’ he says. ‘And it seems that some kind of megalithic building or measuring unit was used. It seems so.’
We’re inside the trefoil temple now, which is indeed highly elliptical. ‘In fact this is the major axis, right?’ says Chris. ‘And this is the minor axis of the ellipse. There is a property which says that if you take from that point to the centre, and from here to here, and if you square this part plus this part squared then that part comes equal to exactly half the major axis. Eventually it comes. I’m not saying that they invented the Pythagoras theorem, but they had discovered it by chance, so that they could alter the eccentricity of the temples as much as they wanted.’
I tell Chris that a lot of this is going right over the top of my head, but he says the main point is very simple. What it comes down to is that the people who built the Mnajdra complex, and all the other megalithic temples on Malta, worked with a fixed unit of measurement. This unit, of 0.83 metres, is identical to the ‘megalithic yard’ identified by the Scottish archaeoastronomer Alexander Thorn and found throughout megalithic sites that he had surveyed from Callanish in northern Scotland to Carnac in Brittany.8
‘I calculated the perimeter,’ Chris continues with a gesture, ‘and it comes out to whole numbers in megalithic yards. It is the same for all the ellipses, though they vary in eccentricity. So they had the facility to arrange the eccentricity of each temple to the precise extent they required and yet keep the measurement of the perimeter in whole numbers of megalithic yards. Somehow these kinds of mathematical concepts must have been in quite wide circulation in the ancient world and were passed on from one society to another society, perhaps by seafarers. A possible harbourage has been suggested, right here below Mnajdra. And though there are no images of ships carved here, such images do appear at Tarxien.9 So probably this kind of knowledge was passed on by word of mouth, and there was some kind of society that this knowledge was passed on from and to … ‘
‘And ships were part of it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because this kind of accurate astronomy is also what you want for navigation really. It’s the same skill.’
‘That’s right,’ says Chris, but he sounds distracted. He is an engineer by profession, and I can see that he is uncomfortable with speculation and prefers to stick with what he can measure and observe.
Still, there is one other point – much more speculative than ancient navigational skills – that I want to ask him about. When his late uncle was completing his analysis of the archaeoastronomy of the Lower Temple at Mnajdra he had discovered something odd concerning the summer and winter solstice alignments.
It is well known that the sun’s rising points at the solstices are not fixed but vary with the slowly increasing and then decreasing angle of the earth’s axis in relation to the plane of its orbit around the sun. These changes in what is known technically as the ‘obliquity of the ecliptic’ (presently in the range of 23 degrees 27 minutes) unfold over a great cycle of more than 40,000 years and if alignments are sufficiently ancient they will incorporate a degree of error, caused by changing obliquity. From the error (assuming they were built accurately in the first place) it is possible to calculate the exact date of their construction.10
In the case of Mnajdra, the alignment today is good, but not quite perfect because (to take the example of the summer solstice) the rays that form the slit-image are projected two centimetres away from the edge of the large slab at the rear of the temple. However, Paul Micallef’s calculations show that when the obliquity of the ecliptic stood at 24 degrees 9 minutes and 4 seconds the alignment would have been perfect with the slit-image forming exactly in line with the edge of the slab. This ‘perfect’ alignment has occurred twice in the last 15,000 years – once in 3700 BC (‘this is the first consideration of the Mnajdra Temple’s age’, notes Paul Micallef)11 and again, earlier, in 10,205 BC (‘this is the second consideration of the Mnajdra Temple’s age’).12
But Chris doesn’t want to be drawn on the earlier date. He admits it’s a ‘mathematical possibility’ but says he would prefer to stick with the orthodox scheme of things: ‘The second age makes the temple 12,205 years old, which is absurd when compared to archaeological history. In my view the archaeological context locking the temples in to the fourth and third millennia BC is reasonably good, so that’s the context I work with.’
And he’s right. The archaeological context is reasonably good – in the sense that no find, or at least none that have been officially logged, conclusively demonstrates that any of the temples are older than the fourth millennium BC. But, that being said, the archaeological context of the megalithic temples of Malta is also, in another sense, appallingly, awfully bad.
Antediluvian temples of the giants?
The essential problem, repeated over and over again, is contamination of the crime scene. Indeed, other than Skorba, which was thoroughly and professionally excavated by David Trump in the 1960s and which is partially built over the top of habitation layers predating the temple’s construction,13 it seems that not a single megalithic temple on Malta has presented itself to archaeologists of the post-radiocarbon era in a sealed and undisturbed condition. Although this includes Tarxien, which was excavated from 1915 onwards (still fifty years before calibrated radiocarbon), the superb stratigraphy and detailed site notes of the commendable Sir Temi Zammit do provide us with a reliable record there.14
The same cannot be said for the semi-subterranean Borchtorff Circle excavated at Xaghra on Gozo between 1987 and 1994. It proved to have fallen victim to an earlier excavation in the 1820s by a certain Otto Beyer in the employ of the British Army, who very badly disturbed and redistributed the stratigraphy and kept no records.15
Likewise, Mnajdra was first excavated in 1840 by C. Lenormant, who kept no records, followed by a mixed assortment of other diggers, then by Mayr at the beginning of the twentieth century and then by Ashby, who excavated in 1910 ‘those parts which had not been completely ransacked by the original excavators’.16
Hagar Qim has been constantly interfered with by treasurer hunters, amateur archaeologists and self-appointed site-restorers from at least the eighteenth century onwards. Particularly extensive site clearance and restoration took place in 1839 on the orders of the then governor of Malta Sir Henry Bouverie. Only a short and extremely inadequate report accompanied by an inaccurate plan was prepared.17
And at Gigantija excavations were begun in 1827, once again by Otto Bayer. True to form, he produced no report and did not preserve pottery and small finds.18 Oddly enough, however, the first description of the monument following Beyer’s excavation (published in Paris later in 1827 by L. Mazzara) bore the title Temple antediluvien des Géants.19
Carbon-dating Malta: is the chronology secure?
Tas Slig, 25 June 2001
It is certainly the case that not a single carbon-date from Malta supports the presence of any humans on these islands prior to 5200 BC, let alone the presence of humans capable of building with megaliths.
On the other hand, it must also be observed that the general state of disrupted stratigraphy at the temples has made it difficult for archaeologists to obtain C-14 samples in contexts where they can unequivocally confirm the age of the megalithic ruins – and indeed to obtain C-14 samples at all.
On 25 June 2001 I discussed these problems with the charming and affable Professor Anthony Bonanno of the University of Malta on site at a dig he was supervising at Tas Slig.
GH: If we take the dating of a temple like Mnajdra or Hagar Qim, the better-known temples, how many samples of carbon-datable material would the dating be based on?
Bonanno: Nothing at all.
GH: Nothing at all?
Bonanno: Hagar Qim and Mnajdra were cleared rather than excavated in the nineteenth century, and no proper records were kept, and the excavation methods were far from scientific. So no biological material was kept that could be carbon-dated.
GH: Right. Does that apply to Gigantija too?
Bonanno: That applies to Gigantija as well, yes.
GH: Right. In general, are the megalithic temples founded very close to bedrock, or are they founded on an earth layer on top of the bedrock?
Bonanno: You can tell that in the Maltese context, all stone buildings lie on bedrock. The cover, earth cover, is very shallow … and then, of course, you need a really solid base.
GH: But how would they – sorry, this may seem like an ignorant question – but if they put the megaliths on bedrock, how do they make them stand up? Don’t they have to bed them into earth or something?
Bonanno: Right. It doesn’t mean that the uprights of the temple stand on bedrock. In fact this is another difference between the construction technique of our temples and say the construction techniques of Stonehenge. There, the standing megaliths are inserted into the ground. Here, a platform is normally prepared consisting of megaliths, but horizontal megaliths, and it is on top of those that the lower uprights of the temple are placed.