“I was here!” But I didn’t carve my name or other graffiti on any of the prehistoric temples we explored in Malta, as did countless visitors from the 1800s. Instead, I took selfies to mark my presence.
As we explored museums, prehistoric temples, tight catacombs, the Old Prison, and intriguing cart ruts, we also stumbled across numerous Maltese mysteries.
Why did visitors feel they had to carve names and dates into Ggantija temple’s stone walls? Did giants build the temples? Were cart ruts made by temple builders or Atlantis citizens or aliens? How old does graffiti have to be before it moves from the “vandalism” category into “historic and worth preserving”? Are selfies an improvement? And does carved graffiti prove “that there were idiots long before spray paint was invented,” as one writer suggested?
National Museum of Archaeology
Wait! These aren’t just boring stone slabs! Can you imagine the ancient stonemason carefully carving these spirals and swirls, thinking about the gods they might appease with animal sacrifices, or perhaps considering what he’d eat on his lunch break… The tiny sculpture called the Embracing Couple shows rare prehistoric emotion.
We began our prehistoric ponderings at the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta – in the former Auberge de Provence, built by the Knights of Malta to house their knights from France. This excellent overview of Malta’s heritage from the time before writing also allowed us to see artifacts from temples and catacombs we didn’t have time to visit, despite our two-week sojourn.
Malta’s main island (confusingly, also called Malta) and the smaller island of Gozo are chockablock full of prehistoric temples and burial grounds. Seven temples are UNESCO World Heritage sites and older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids. They and 30 other temples were gathering places for the rituals of life – much like later churches, synagogues or mosques.
The museum contained treasures removed from temples for protection from weather, vandalism and wannabe graffiti artists. We examined pottery, statues, stone implements, ornaments and great slabs of limestone decorated with spirals, swirls, and sheep. People settled in Malta about 8,000 years ago, possibly arriving from Sicily. They turned to agriculture, gradually increasing the complexity of their social organizations.
The skeptical might dismiss many artifacts as just so many slabs of stone and lumpy bits of clay. But we put our imaginations to work and found it fascinating:
- The tiny Embracing Couple, found at Tarxien Temple, showed two people hugging, probably kissing since their heads were so close together. Stripes were the hair on their heads, the horizontal line their embracing arms. Archeologists love this Neolithic artifact, dating to 3200 BCE, because it’s the only one they’ve found that shows human emotion. “This artefact proves that emotions are an integral part of human relationships, irrespective of the era one is living in,” said the info panel.
- Rows of long-horned sheep, a pig and a ram decorated two stone slabs, also from Tarxien Temple. The tops showed signs of burning, suggesting they may have been used for animal sacrifices.
- Clay animal heads, with pointy snouts and nostrils, were the earliest representations of animals found so far, dating possibly to 5200 BCE.
- An altar, looking like a squat stone column, from Hagar Qim temple, had graffiti on top, scratched there before the altar was moved to a glass case in the museum for safe-keeping. I was too short to see the graffiti.
The Sleeping Lady, an exquisite little sculpture found at the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, has become the symbol for prehistoric Malta. Just about every souvenir shop sells models.
Rock-cut tombs and catacombs are found all around the Mediterranean and into Portugal. But Maltese people elevated them to spectacular forms, especially the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, an underground temple and catacomb. This three-level complex of passages, rooms, halls, pits and niches, embellished with elaborate carvings and ochre paintings, was used from about 3600 to 1500 BCE.
(Note: We planned our Malta trip in three days and then left – no time to get tickets for the Hypogeum, which should be booked months in advance. Too many visitors had led to damage; now, temperature and humidity are strictly controlled, and visits are limited to 80 per day. That’s why it’s hard to get tickets.)
Since we couldn’t visit, I was happy to see images and artifacts from Hal Saflieni, especially the perfect little Sleeping Lady sculpture. Another clay statuette also showed pendulous breasts and a lumpy midriff. I could have been a model if I’d lived back then!
Likewise, Xaghra Circle on Gozo island was another large burial site that we couldn’t visit. It was closed for renovations. Archeologists have been excited to study funeral practices there: a newborn in its mother’s arms, a boar skull with a man, a puppy with two children. The site was first excavated in the early 1800s, then filled in again and forgotten, not to be rediscovered until 1987.
Hagar Qim temple
Hagar Qim, a huge stone circle temple, is now protected under a tent. The short, dimpled column is an altar; the original (left) is in the archeology museum, while a replica (right) sits at the site. The replica does not include the graffiti carved on top of the original.
Our temple explorations began at Hagar Qim. Run by Heritage Malta, it had excellent exhibits and an audioguide that described what archeologists believe so far about why and how prehistoric peoples, with only stone-age tools, went to all that effort to haul gigantic slabs of limestone to the various sites and erect the temples. What a job!
We stood gazing up at the monster slabs – the largest is 20 tonnes – and tried to imagine our responses if our bosses had told us to haul those rocks here and stand them upright in circles.
“Only ropes and stone tools, no metal – pretty impressive,” said Bill.
Hagar Qim and Mnajdra, located close by, were erected about 3600 BCE. They’re among the earliest free-standing stone buildings of such complexity in the world.
I was excited to see a model of the altar we’d seen in the archeology museum. Carved from a single block of limestone, it looks like a squat column, with dimpled sides and carvings that could be a planted pot with leaves, or bull horns stacked on top of each other. Archeologists wonder if the dots could be a calendar or counting system. No one really knows. What they do know is that the graffiti on top of the original are modern.
Mnajdra temple
A graffito of a temple was carved onto one of Mnajdra’s limestone slabs.
From Hagar Qim, constructed on a ridge overlooking the sea, we walked down a long, very hot stone path across typical Maltese garrigue terrain to Mnajdra, settled into the landscape. It includes three temples. Circular holes in some walls allowed the sun to shine directly through them on the spring and autumn equinoxes and light up an altar.
The temples were built of two types of limestone: softer honey-coloured globigerina and harder coralline. Upon close examination, we could see the difference in how they’d weathered over the millennia. Stone carving is still a common craft in Malta.
The audioguide kept asking us what our theories were about why the temples were built and how the builders moved the slabs.
“Beer and pizza,” said Bill. “Everyone knows that if you ask your friends to help move, you offer beer and pizza as thanks. Especially for those gigantic slabs.”
“It’s like asking your friends to help move a pull-out couch or an upright piano,” I added.
But seriously, some of those slabs had circular holes in them. If you put a rounded, cannon-ball-like stone in there, you could roll the stone like on ball bearings.
“If they had a stand here selling cold beer, I’d move some stones for them,” said Bill.
The temples were suddenly abandoned in about 2500 BCE but no one knows why. The sites were forgotten and gradually buried, then rediscovered in the 1800s.
Despite our jokes, the audioguides were good.
Ggantija temples
A Ggantija room with three niches was discovered intact in 1827 but later fell to ruin. After 1901, the niches were rebuilt in their original shape based on paintings, created by visitors who also carved their names. A model of the Ggantija temples showed their four-leaf-clover shape. We enjoyed sculptures from the closed Xaghra Circle in the Ggantija visitor centre.
Graffiti and paintings – the flip sides of visitor effects were discussed in intriguing exhibits in the visitor centre at the Ggantija temples on Gozo island. Huge megaliths at the temple entrance were covered in graffiti carved by visitors in the early 1800s, shortly after the temples were excavated (using manpower by convicts from Gozo’s Old Prison).
British ships heading from Gibraltar to the eastern Mediterranean stopped in at Malta. Travellers aboard those ships had a few days with nothing to do, so they saw the sights and scratched their names and dates into the stones for posterity.
“This practice is now widely condemned and carries hefty penalties!” read a sign.
While historical graffiti are now studied and valued, today’s is not. If I had carved my name and the date, would that be studied and valued in 200 years?
The good news is, those early visitors also recorded their impressions in diaries that survive. They also painted watercolours and drew the buildings, gardens, harbours and prehistoric temples that they visited, as souvenirs. (Fridge magnets were in short supply back then.)
It’s hard to imagine, but the temples were later ignored and fell to ruin, only to be re-discovered again. In the 1900s, when archeologists were trying to figure out which rocks went where, those drawings and paintings came in mighty handy. Charles Frederick de Brochtorff, for example, had created a series of Ggantija drawings.
“These resulted in the most detailed pictorial record we have for the site,” said an exhibit.
I was quite taken with this Visitor History section – a topic not usually covered by visitor centres.
The name Ggantiji means Giant’s Tower in Maltese and refers to early theories that giants built these temples. The largest megalith is seven metres high and about 50 tonnes, so you can see how the giant theory could have some merit.
The visitor centre also included artifacts from the nearby Xaghra Circle, including human statuettes, clay bowls, figures made from cow toe bones, and jewelry. Used for burials from 4100 to 2500 BCE, Xaghra was first recorded by an artist in the 1770s. The site was cleared in the 1820s. That’s when one of Brocktorff’s watercolours shows a man climbing out of a cave holding a human skull. After that the site was reburied to preserve it, used for agriculture and forgotten until the 1960s when it was relocated and excavated between 1987 and 1994.
Catacombs
The Ta’ Bistra Catacombs complex of 57 tombs ranged along the side of an ancient quarry.
We visited Ta’ Bistra Catacombs first and found them terribly interesting, not knowing what was to come.
The 57 tombs, first excavated in 1933, are in a long line, possibly carved into a rocky ridge or carved off a long corridor that was destroyed when people quarried the rock in ancient and modern times. No one really knows. The western end was covered over when a road was built but found again in 2004. Some tombs were looted and used for animal pens, storage areas, and even an air raid shelter.
We examined a pretty-well-preserved skull on display. Archeologists found few bones and were surprised at the lack of children’s tombs, given that just three of every five babies born during the Roman period lived beyond a year, and the average age was just 25. Another mystery.
We learned a lot:
- Triclinia are tables carved into the rock beside tombs, so families could share a meal there to end the period of mourning. Crazy, eh? Although they exist throughout the former Roman Empire, it’s only in Malta that triclinia are carved from the natural rock, rather than carved elsewhere and brought in.
- Window tombs – where the oval tomb is accessed through a square window-like opening.
- A cubiculum is a squarish room with tombs set into arched niches on the side walls, often with a window tomb on the third wall.
- Some tombs came with rock headrests and – get this! – bottle holders in between! Imagine going into eternity with a coffee or wine bottle holder within easy reach. Sweet.
We saw references to burial caves, rock-cut tombs, and catacombs. What’s the difference? As natural caves filled with bodies, they were expanded by cutting into the rock, and then elaborated upon even further into catacombs, which usually have passageways and décor such as inscriptions or paintings or sculptures. There. One mystery solved.
At St. Paul’s Catacombs, in the visitor centre, we respectfully examined the skeleton of a young woman 18 to 27 years old but already suffering degenerative joint disease, probably due to mechanical work. She was found with a bone hair pin, a bronze needle used for making fish nets, a glass bottle for unguents, and dishes – everything needed for her trip to the afterlife.
After Ta’ Bistra, St. Paul’s Catacombs blew our minds. We found the enormous complex fascinating. With 23 separate entrances from the surface, you could descend to 1,025 tombs that had held up to 1,500 bodies. They covered diverse cultures (Punic, Roman, Byzantine) and religions (Jewish, Christian, Pagan).
Tombs closest to the entrance were often plastered, painted and marked with symbols carved into the limestone: menorahs for Jewish people, palm fronds and crosses for Christians. Others had tools of the trade to mark different guilds, as well as boats and ships, birds, figures, and words. Names of the deceased were rare.
Did these carvings qualify as graffiti, defined as unauthorized writing or drawing on a public surface? If they were made by the families using the tombs, then I would say not. But who knows if some random visitor carved an extra cross or two over the millennia?
Exhibits in the visitor centre and throughout the catacombs explained funerary practices. Some bodies were cremated, then placed in clay amphorae in the tomb, or they were simply wrapped in a linen shroud. Wooden coffins were used from about 100 AD.
Signs and symbols at the entrance to each of St. Paul’s Catacombs warned visitors about what to expect: real bones, how many people could fit, whether the tombs were Pagan, Jewish or Christian, etc.
Then we began descending to the hot and humid catacombs. Although we went through doors and down modern steps to each catacomb, back in the day, they used ladders down shafts.
We had to watch our heads – even I had to duck under low doorways and squeeze through narrow openings. Poor Bill bonked his head several times.
It was interesting to learn the differences between funerals then and now. Eulogies are a common element, but not so much the funeral processions, which included hired mourners to weep and wail, a mime to impersonate the deceased, and the slaves freed in the will of the deceased. And those triclinia! Pagans and Christians shared a family feast as they reclined around those carved tables.
While some catacombs were large, others had low ceilings and doorways. Menorahs and ships were common carvings. Children were often buried in shelf-like cuts in the tomb walls. Mourners lounged around the carved-rock tables for funerary feasts.
The exhibits did include some real skeletons, but the descriptions humanized them. A baby’s skeleton was aged somewhere between 38 weeks gestation and one month old – a symbol of the high infant mortality rate. At the other end of the spectrum was a 60-year-old man – extremely rare back then, when just 25 percent of people lived into their 40s and only six percent made it to 60.
I don’t find sites like this depressing or macabre or creepy. Death is part of life. And since Bill and I are in our 60s, we’ve experienced many deaths of loved ones and are just that much closer to our own demise.
We stood looking at a two-person tomb with a broken section in between.
“This is for us!” I said. “We could hold hands for eternity through that gap.”
“Yeah,” said Bill, pointing to the small light that lit up the tomb. “And you’d get the bedside lamp.”
I laughed at this truth. Whenever we check into a hotel, I automatically go for the side of the bed with the reading light.
Old Prison graffiti
Prisoners carved ships, names, dates etc. into the prison walls and floor.
Anyone interested in graffiti should head to the Old Prison, within the Cittadella in Victoria on Gozo island. When the prison was renovated from 1988 to 1996, a thick layer of lime whitewash, which had been applied for hygienic reasons, was removed and the graffiti were discovered. The Old Prison walls are covered, and I mean covered, in graffiti – mostly ships. When you think about it, everyone would have arrived by ship (no airplanes then) and likely dreamed of departing by ship as well.
Even the floor featured graffiti. The soft globigerina limestone could be etched using any pointed tool. Prisoners probably used fragments of broken tools. Ships, handprints and crosses predominated, but there were also names, dates, Stars of David, games, footprints, flags and figures. Vertical lines counted the days of imprisonment. For those who know their floating vessels, the graffiti included a brigantine, British first rate, third rate of the Order, tartan, barque, galley, fishing boat, modern sailboats, and many Maltese speronara.
“They are considered the largest collection of historical graffiti in one single place on the Maltese Islands,” said an info panel. Surprisingly, there is no obscene language, no hand with the middle finger raised, denoting a strict code of behaviour.
Historians have only recently begun to study graffiti to answer the 5Ws – who, what, when where and why people have etched their marks in stone, on buildings all over Malta.
Cart ruts: another Maltese mystery
Were the cart ruts made by aliens, part of Atlantis, or made by the temple builders hauling large slabs? No one knows.
First off, although they’re called cart ruts, there’s no evidence these parallel ruts in the bedrock were made by carts – that’s just the easy name given to them. It’s another Maltese mystery: what or who made these ruts? When? And why?
Cart ruts run for miles all over Malta and Gozo. No archeologists or geologists have ever determined how old they are. The National Museum of Archaeology had an exhibit about the ruts, but we went to see some for ourselves.
At Clapham Junction – so named because the ruts looked like merging train tracks at the British train station of the same name – we parked and walked along a dirt road until we found the ruts. We followed many sets through rough fields. One pair crossed over another; two other sets merged to become one. They reminded us of Pompeii’s streets, with deeply worn grooves made by Roman carts.
Cart-rut theories abound: Maybe they’re graffiti carved by giants or aliens. Maybe they were made by temple builders pulling the megalithic slabs of limestone. Maybe they were part of Atlantis.
I had just read the book Meet Me in Atlantis, in which author Mark Adams explored various theories about locations for the fabled city, including Malta. The ruts are theoretically remnants of Atlantis’s irrigation system. Adams concluded they were too small and, since the ruts are in pairs, were “probably [made] by the constant friction of wheels or sled runners.”
After visiting the prehistoric temples, Bill and I agreed that the temple builders had likely made the ruts. Stone spheres of all sizes – from softball to bowling ball up to basketball size – were found at all the temple sites, and there were dimples in many stone slabs to match. It seemed obvious to me that the builders used the spheres as ball bearings to move the slabs, making ruts on the ground. Two mysteries solved at once!
“Aha!” said Bill. “I’ve solved the mystery about who made the cart ruts.” He pointed to the snail, merrily making his way along a rut in a prehistoric temple stone.
Selfies vs graffiti
I took a selfie instead of carving my name on Ggantija’s prehistoric temple stones.
I’m going out on a limb here, but I’d say it’s a rare visitor to Ggantija temples who does not take a photo of those fascinating prehistoric standing stones or a selfie. Most people want something to say, “I was here and saw this wonderful sight.”
As much as we make fun of selfies, they’re a much better way of saying, “I was here” than carving our names, initials and dates. Or spray-painting the same.
Of course, Malta’s graffiti also raised questions about our human desire to leave a mark on this world. Something to ponder along with all those other mysteries we discovered in Malta. Although we learned a lot about prehistoric temples and catacombs and cart ruts, we encountered just as many mysteries that keep us musing about our explorations there.
Now, smile for a selfie!
We visited Malta in September and October 2024. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.
