Tarxien Temples, Malta

The two small islands of Malta and Gozo are home to no less than eight major megalithic temples, built between 3600 and 2500 BCE. Archaeologists consider the complex of temples at Tarxien to be the most important, because they clearly trace out an evolutionary progression. They are not as much visited as some of the others, though, because they are not as well preserved and because they are in the middle of a modern town rather than out in the country.

You can see the three successive temples in the plan and photo above. Earliest, before 3300 BCE, was the badly preserved temple in the upper right. This originally had five "apses," as we call the semicircular rooms that branch off from the central space. Then the lower left temple was built, and finally the central group, which is an extension of the second temple. Incidentally, archaeologists assume that these temples once had roofs and so were probably quite dark inside, perhaps with small windows illuminating key points like altars.

The final temple was the most heavily decorated of all the Maltese temples. In its deepest recess was this statue, which would once have been about 6 feet (2 meters) tall. This, like all the art at Tarxien, is a replica; the original is in the Archaeological Museum.

Around the "goddess" statue were a remarkable array of carvings: animals, spirals, other abstract forms.

Numerous small figurines were recovered from the site when it was excavated in the 1910s.

Ceremonial flint knives and animal bones found in the temples make us think that animal sacrifice was a key rite. Each temple also had an open courtyard outside each entrance where the ground was compacted. No doubt public rituals of some kind were enacted there, and it would be nice to think that they involved dancing.

These stone balls have been found around all the temples and also at quarry sites; the leading theory is that they were used as rollers to transport the megalithic blocks.

Malta's neolithic inhabitants arrived in a single wave in about 4100 BCE, probably from Sicily. After that they evolved independently for 1600 years, with little evidence of outside influence. The temples of this phase are not really like anything else in the world. Then in 2500 BCE the temple culture came to an abrupt end. The new rulers used the old temples as burial grounds for their cremated dead, and they slowly filled in with sand. The new rulers also came from Italy or Sicily and they brought with them the warrior cults of Bronze Age Europe, in which swords figure more prominently than fat goddesses.