SPECIAL MALTA SUPPLEMENT

Transcription

1 VOLUME 6 ISSUE5 JULY 2012 For info about forthcoming events, contact: Robert Morgan 22 Hill Top Avenue Harrogate North Yorkshire HG1 3BH tel (01423) Mob robert.morgan1957@gmail.com SPECIAL MALTA SUPPLEMENT Dig This! The Newsletter of 3D Archaeological Society This year s Malta trip was a great success so much so that a special edition has been devoted to the journey. Robert supplied me with the photos and the text, as written by himself and Andrea. I have done my best to produce a newsletter that encapsulates the experiences of the group by bringing the two together. ( I am VERY envious not to have been there after reading all about it!) I have made only minor editorial changes to make the words and pictures fit together. So, it s over to Andrea and Robert, and I hope you enjoy reading about 3D s adventure as much as I did! P.S. Sorry if I left out the bits about shopping Andrea it would have been EVEN longer! The group enjoying a well deserved lunch break

2 Page 2 Day 1 Headless women artefacts Since this was a 3D trip you can take it as read that Robert made us get up at a ridiculous time in the middle of the night to get on the minibus to the airport. Keen to get us started on the archaeology early on, he gave us all a card with the Maltese archaeological eras on, and a warning that we would be tested on them later. Fast forward 10 hours and a rather tired and sleepy busload arrive in Valetta. First stop was lunch al fresco at the Cafe Royale, opposite the ruined opera house and a large building site where a very smartly restored city gate will eventually be revealed. Robert briefed us over foccacia and pastizzi (a local delicacy) and possibly a glass or two of the local wine and beer before we headed off to the Archaeological Museum, via the poshest Tommy Hilfiger shop you have ever seen - the latest summer fashions alongside allegorical statues of ladies representing Asia and Africa. The Museum is sited within the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of St John and we were greeted with a beautiful painted ceiling, depicting a knight in the clouds being serenaded by angels or cherubs. One highlight was a row of obese women who had completely lost their heads - think Beryl Cook meets the Stone Age. These were strange, sumo like stone bodies all found without heads, and it's thought that there Were many heads, kept separately and interchanged for reasons unknown. Inside St John s Cathedral We were also treated to our first sighting of the Sleeping Lady, a small beautiful and detailed ceramic found at lowest level of The Hypogeum. Malta has the oldest Neolithic finds in the world and she was found in the earliest part of the excavations. One theory is that she portrays death itself as she is laid on a couch in repose in the fetal position, another that she was the human form of grief about death. The figurine of the Sleeping Lady and the couch she is laid on were fashioned separately and you can see that as the figure was pressed onto the couch while the clay was still wet, the couch was pushed downwards, bowing it as if under her weight. Next stop was St John's Co- Cathedral. The plain facade hid a richly decorated and ornate interior with chapels dedicated to the langues, and a number of paintings by Caravaggio who had been taken in by the knights there before being publicly disgraced and thrown out after fatally injuring a knight in a fight. His painting of the Beheading of John the Baptist dominates the Oratory and is the only one he signed - in the saint s blood. At this point, tired and emotional, we adjourned to the Cathedral Square for coffee and cakes before heading off to the Church of St Paul of the Shipwreck. Following our meal, some of us took a walk to the nearby Dolmen Hotel to view the temple remains the hotel was built around. There we found Bugibba Temple bathed in artificial light and consisting of orthostatic blocks, an entrance passage, two apses and other wall lines. Three alter blocks were discovered during the excavation of this temple, two were, one with spiral designs and the other with a fish design, both of which we had seen earlier in the day on display in the National Archaeology Museum in Valetta. Bugibba Templa at night

3 Page 3 Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating! Due to the surrounding buildings, the satnav could not get a clear fix on any satellites, so its female voice resorted to screeching at us! She was duly terminated and we returned to using maps and road signs! The Hypogeum or the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum to give it its full name is a magnificent underground temple and burial complex discovered by builders in They were digging a cistern (water tank) for the new houses they were building when they accidently Day 2 broke through into the middle layer of the complex. Being builders, they shored up the weak points, carried on building the houses and didn t tell anyone of their discovery. It would be several years before the secret under the Victorian terraced houses would be revealed and examination and excavation could begin. The Hypogeum tour is an electronic guided trip through the dimly lit complex with a t m o s p h e r i c m u s i c accompanying you as you read the noticeboards or view the ancient structures and wall paintings. The tour around the monument is informative, well laid out, atmospheric and well worth the money, time and effort spent to get there and we all agreed it was just wonderful. Photography was forbidden within the temple so we couldn t bring back pictures of the numerous chambers carved out of the rock and decorated, where the bones of some 7000 people were found, but the guide book has plenty. And on to the Tarxien Temples. Discovered in 1914 by farmers damaging their ploughs on the stones and excavated between 1915 and 1917 by Sir Temi Zammit these temples surrounded by housing produced many beautiful carvings and sculptures. There are four temples built at various times, but all with a similar design of entrances, corridors and apses. All of the carvings and statues are in the Tarxien Temples. N a t i o n a l M u s e u m o f Archaeology, but replicas are on site for all to admire. Beautifully carved lintels, some depicting animals and others swirl patterns, and sculptures of what appears to be the lower half of a female body dressed in a pleated skirt, the top part being damaged well before the excavations took place. Some of the walls have what are locally known as oracle holes cut through them, allowing communication between the private inner room of the temple and the more public outer rooms. These inner most chambers are smaller and access more restricted, suggesting only a small hierarchy of people being allowed access to them and possibly their secrets. Alters can be seen in all four temples with the one having a carved out cupboard at the back of it and a porthole cut in its decorated front face filled in again with the carved stone that had been removed so that it acted as a door. Once you start looking in detail at these temples, you can see how much effort has gone in to producing walls made of closely fitting stones, cutouts in large stones to allow others to fit snuggly within them, detailed and expertly executed decorative carving and wonderful statuary, you wonder how on earth the peoples of the time (3,600 BC) managed to do this with stone or antler tools alone! Leaving the Tarxien Temples, we made our way south-west skirting the airport and eventually arriving at a large busy parking area designed for the visitors to the Blue Lagoon, a coastal cave system that can only be reached by boat. Here we ate lunch and drank beer (except for the driver). Engraved Tarxien lintel

4 Page 4 Pushing on, we drove a short distance to our next archaeological site, Ħaġar Qim; a single temple built on a hill top and badly eroded by the salt laden winds on its southern seaward side. It doesn t help that the temple is built from the less weather resistant of the two l i m e s t o n e s kn o wn as Globigerina found on Malta. The other being made from a coral base and known as Coralline Limestone was much harder. Because of the erosion problems, a sail type cover has been built over the Day 2 Ħaġar Qim temple to protect it. Ħaġar Qim was built in the same style as the Tarxien Temples with a central corridor and four apses leading off it. A further two apses were later added, but unusually for these types of temples, the terminal apse at the head of the corridor had another entrance to the outside world. Some 600 metres downhill from Ħaġar Qim and standing in a natural hollow in the southern cliffs is the complex of the three temples of Mnajdra. Arranged to form an oval forecourt some 30 metres across, the smaller three apse temple is to the right as you face the complex and the newest and most complete on the left. The temple alters and some standing orthostats are decorated with a regular dot pattern which must have taken many man hours to achieve. The central temple also has a carving on one of its entrance orthostats depicting a temple complete with a roof. 3D at Hagar Qim Domus Romana Next stop Rabat and the Domus Romana, once the house of a wealthy citizen discovered in A small museum of roman antiquities is built over the remains of beautiful and very finely worked mosaic floors dating from the 1st century BC. The centrepiece of the peristyle, a on ce op en cou r tyar d surrounded by columns is a mosaic floor with a geometric border designed to give a 3d appearance with a central image of two birds perched on a water bowl, known as the Drinking Doves of Sosos. This building also houses some fine sculptures and pictures made of fine micro mosaics. Following a discussion with a Traffic Warden and a groveling apology from me (Robert), we moved the car and parked in what is locally known as the ditch, a car park built in the outer defensive ditch to the fortified medieval town of Mdina. Mosaic detail The citadel of Mdina was fortified as long ago as 1000 BC by the Phoenicians and called their settlement Malet meaning place of shelter. The Romans then built a large town here and called it Melita. The present name came from the Arabic period of occupation when they built strong walls and dug deep ditches to separate this town they called Medina from its suburbs (known as rabat in Arabic). In medieval times Mdina was known as Cittá Mdina Notabile Noble City and b ecame the favou red residence of the Maltese aristocracy. Here we toured the streets looking at the architecture and the magnificent views from the town walls before taking on refreshments and our evening meal at the Fontanella Tea Gardens, a lovely restaurant perched on those huge defensive walls with the most magnificent views across the Maltese countryside all the way to the sea. Here we ordered drinks, pizzas, cakes and more drinks whilst enjoying the views and the rest after such a busy day of temple touring, before taking a final walk around the Silent City as Mdina is sometimes referred to because of its peacefulness in the evenings after the tourists have left

5 Page 5 It's difficult to say which aches most - backs, feet or heads! We've just returned 'home' to the Hotel Santana after another busy 12 hour day of archaeology (and a very nice Bacchanalian dinner). We started out at 9am this morning, heading north to catch the ferry to Gozo. We rolled on at some little port with an unpronounceable name and 25 minutes later we rolled off at Mgarr on Gozo, and set off for the island capital, Victoria. The town was named after Queen Victoria who bestowed this Day 3 Gozo honour on the island. The Gozotans thanked her very much and then, as soon as was polite, went back to calling in Rabat The skyline on our drive to Victoria was dominated by the dome of St John at Xewkija, Mosta's nearest rival for third largest unsupported dome in the world (after St Peters in Rome and the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul). We had been told it might be quiet in Gozo on Sunday as the whole island is extremely religious. So it was something of a surprise how busy and lively the town was - the locals parading in their finery to church, lots of small children in their Sunday best, since it was first communion, and the Sunday hat market in full swing. After a detour via St George s church, we climbed up to the Citadel, following a wedding party congregating on the steps of the Cathedral. We hung around hoping to be offered a glass of bubbly before heading off to the Museum of Archaeology. Ġgantija The site itself is quite small, with twin temples sharing the same facade. They were excavated in the late 19th century but then abandoned to the elements for 60 years, something that's clear from the weather damage and erosion to the stones. Certainly the site is not as well preserved as the temples at Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra: it is however, easier to pronounce! The two temples are built side by side, enclosed within a single massive boundary wall and opening onto a common forecourt, itself raised on a high terrace wall. The most striking feature of the southern temple is the surviving height of both the outer and inner walls at just over 7m tall. These blocks have never been disturbed, the scaffolding currently disfiguring the façade being intended to ensure that this remains true. Most of the altar blocks found in the apses of these temples (now displayed in the museums) were decorated with the dot patterns seen in other temples in the archipelago, but without the enclosing borders, suggesting these temples were earlier than those we had visited earlier. Model of Ggantija temples The Ta Kola Windmill Our next port of call was the Ta Kola Windmill. Built in 1725 this is one of the few Maltese windmills still with its sails (although they were not in evidence the day we visited) a n d o r i g i n a l w o o d e n machinery intact. The lower floors are now given over to displays of old tools and machinery pertaining to the miller s trade, including a forge with bellows powered by the windmill itself. The upper floors were the living quarters of the miller s family and decorated with old country furniture and fabrics. The Ta Kola Windmill

6 Page 6 Day 3 (continued) At Mosta we visited the Church of Santa Marija Assunta, more commonly known as the Mosta Dome. At 40 metres in diameter it out-domes St. Paul s Cathedral in London by 6.7 metres, and is reputed to be either the third or the fourth largest unsupported dome in the world, surpassed only by St Peter s in Rome, Aya Sofia in Istanbul and (though Mosta Dome officials are not much amused by this recent addition) the church at Xewkija in Gozo. Whatever the size ranking, the Mosta Dome is a remarkable church with an elegant interior, built amid great controversy to the design of Giorgio Grognet de Vasse that creates a round church rather than a church shaped like a Latin cross. Building started in 1833 and it took 27 years to complete. During World War II, a bomb pierced the dome while the church was crammed full of parishioners sheltering from the air raid. It skidded across the floor but, miraculously, did not explode. A replica is on display in the church. Mosta dome Stomachs rumbling, we headed out of Mosta for Mdina and after failing to get into the Fontanella Tea Gardens because of a private party being held there, we adjourned to the Bacchus Restaurant on the city s bastion walls, with a garden for outdoor dining and what were two ammunition magazines from the time of the Knights where we were seated. The restaurant can seat 600 people, but when we sat down to eat, we appeared to be the only people there. The food was excellent and full of flavour with a service to match. A superb end to what turned out to be a fabulous trip to an island that was friendly and so full of historic monuments that a long weekend such as ours could not do it justice. Cheers!