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Ġgantija Temple
A few years ago I
had the pleasure of visiting Malta for two months. One of the world’s tiniest
countries, it was easy to visit its celebrated historic sites. The Ggantija
Temples sits on the island of Gozo’s Xagħra plateau. On cliffs high above the
azure Mediterranean Sea, they face south-east, in the direction of the rising
sun.
The day I visited
the temple was cloudless blue with a refreshing breeze rising up from the sea. Tall
palm trees nodded on the wind. There were only a handful of visitors to the
site—a tour bus full of Japanese tourists arrived just as I was leaving the
site—and other than the gulls crying in the air and the surf pounding far below
the cliffs all was silent.
The Ggantija
Temple is actually two connected megalithic structures from the Neolithic
period erected sometime between 3600 – 3500 BC. They are the oldest
free-standing buildings in the world, older even than the Pyramids of Egypt or
England’s Stonehenge. The temple was possibly the site of a fertility cult; archeologists
believe that the numerous figurines and statues found on site are connected
with that cult. According to local Gozitan folktales, giantesses built these
temples and used them as places of worship.
Despite the restorative
work that was going on at the time, I was able to wander through the complex. The
plan of the temple incorporates five large apses with traces of the plaster
that once covered the irregular wall still clinging between the blocks. The
temples are built in the typical clover-leaf shape (some think the shape
resembles the womb, which would seem appropriate for a fertility cult) with
inner facing blocks marking the shape which was then filled in with rubble.
This led to the construction of a series of semi-circular apses connected with
a central passage. The apses were
originally covered by roofing. The structures are all the more impressive for
having been constructed at a time when no metal tools were available to the
natives of the Maltese islands, and when the wheel had not yet been introduced.
Small, spherical stones have been discovered. They are believed to have been
used as ball bearings to transport the enormous stone blocks required for the
temple’s construction.
I slowly walked
through the temple, the hot sun beating down upon me, and wondered what kinds
of rites were practiced here. There was some evidence of animal sacrifice but
the exact nature of the sacred rituals of these prehistoric Maltese remains a mystery
to us. It is clear, though, that sacred sites such as these leave some imprint
upon the environment, a spiritual essence that the sensitive visitor can still
feel after so many thousands of years. It should come as no surprise that even
today worshippers of the goddess find their way to the Ġgantija Temple to practice their modern-day rites.
