What are the oldest free-standing buildings in the world? Stonehenge? The Pyramids? Skara Brae? Something yet to be discovered?

So far the oldest buildings found today date from around 10,000 BC and are at Göbekli Tepe, Urfa in Turkey. The Neolithic temples of Malta, however, come a close second as the earliest examples of free-standing architecture that have survived. Of these temples (at seven sites discovered in Malta – including Hafgar Qin, Mnajdra and Tarxien on the main Island and Ggantija on Gozo) we managed to visit Tarxien, perhaps the most elaborate of them. Dating from at least 2800 BC they were discovered in 1914 and excavated in the two following years.

There are four temples on the site and they are distinguished by the quality of their carvings which consist of spirals and friezes of domestic animals including bulls, goats, pigs and a ram. Clearly these animals were raised by the population but they could also have been used as sacrifices to the gods.

There is also a part of a giant stone sculpture of the Mother Goddess which is the first known statue of a female deity and which was originally over nine feet high.

There are so many mysteries attached to these structures. Who built them? Which deities were worshipped there? What rituals were performed? If only stones could speak!

I tried to figure out the plans of the temples. There was a central chamber surrounded by semi-circular alcoves or apses ranging in number from two to a maximum of five.

These enigmatic structures reminded me of our visits to Skara Brae in Orkney and Jarslhof in Shetland, both of which we had seen while on Scottish Conservation work in the previous millennium.  The main difference, however, was that Skara Brae was domestic architecture whereas Tarxien is of a ritual character.

(At Skara Brae Orkney)

The spiral is, of course, one of the oldest figures to have been carved in stone. Spirals abound as a symbol of eternity from the ancient monuments of Ireland to the temples of Tarxien and even to our own local church of San Cassiano! Often described as a Celtic symbol the spiral pre-dates Celtic civilization and can also be found in the New World’s pre-Columbian sites.

(Spirals at New Grange Ireland)

(Spirals at Tarxien, Malta)

My own opinion is that the spiral is one of the deepest of deep structures in existence. Ranging from DNA’s double-helix to the encircling galaxies’ cosmic magnitudes the spiral is at the same time so real and yet so arcane that it,  quite naturally, is elected as a symbol of meditation, hypnosis and the mystery of life itself.

Returning to the temples we visited there are no remains of their upper part including the roofing. Luckily there is nearby an underground chamber, or hypogeum, we could visit in which ceiling features are carved. The Ħal-Saflieni hypogeum dates from between 3600 BC and 2500 BC.  Originally a sanctuary it later became a necropolis, or burial chamber. Discovered by chance in 1902, when workers who were cutting cisterns for new homes broke the ceiling Ħal-Saflieni was initially entrusted to Father Manuel Magri of the Society of Jesus, who directed the excavations on behalf of the Museums Committee.

We were lucky to have got a ticket the previous day to visit the hypogeum since only a maximum of sixty visitors are allowed to visit it daily in order to avoid pollution from human breath. This pandemic year of course, there will be fewer visitors admitted because of social distancing. (At the same travel restrictions could  even mean that the lucky ones able to visit it might have the whole place to themselves!)

The hypogeum is on two levels. The first is the oldest level and some of its chambers were probably carved out of caves. The second level was created when the ancient builders decided that the first was no longer sufficient. It’s here that the finest chamber is situated:  the Oracle room which is more or less circular and carved into the rock. The famous Sleeping Woman, now in la Valletta’s Museum of Archeology, was discovered here.

We emerged from the hypogeum’s arcane chambers into the bright Maltese winter sunlight amazed by what we had seen but no more enlightened as to their precise meaning.