Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 162, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1911 — The Mystery of Malfa [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Mystery of Malfa

77/r STPA/VGE HYPOOAEUN AT PAULA AHuffrsw *•.

By A. HUGH FISHER

V_ -:. TONE is nowhere far .. * rom the surface in Malta. In o e n squares about Valet to round slabs In « ven ro ’ w ®’ making the paved spaces ap- ’ pear like some kind of western pachlsl-board. covet the mouths of the old granaries, that are tat round chambers cut In the solid rock, with walls made smooth by use of many years. At Citta Vecchia, the former capital of the Island, old cateoomte—probably dug out by the Christians for assemblage during the ages '• <lf persecution—undermine a large area with their extensive ramifications. The remarkable "Hypogaeum” was discovered a feW yean ago at Paula, a village about two-and-*-half miles from the Porte Reale of Valetta. Up to that time the known remains of such underground workings In Malte as belonged to a remote antiquity only included some of the numerous excavated grottoes or artificial caves such as that near the dhurch of St Lorenso, about two-and-a-quarter miles northwest of Hagiar-Kim, circular In plan, with four columns of the natural rock left standing when the cave was made; and thq_many bell-shaped hollows with circular openings near the ruins of Bori-en-Nadur. Professor Zammit, the indefatigable curator of the Valetta Museum, has for the past year or two been spending the greater part of his leisure In the excavation and study of the Hypogaeum; and on a recent visit he took me over the mysterious series of little rock-cut halls, which are in three stages or stories, one above another. He also showed me some chambers which had not yet been cleared 1 out, tn which the floor was covered by accumulated debris to a depth varying from one to two feet. This was composed of sand mingled with crumbling pieces of human bones and occasional fragments of pottery. The smaller bones, such as the carpala and metacarpala. were frequently perfect, but the larger ones were generally broken. The teeth, as tn the case of those illustrated, are quite unharmed by age, as are also the patellae, the little triangular bones of the kneecaps, which Professor Zammit’s assistants carefully preserve and count as the readiest means of gauging the number of bodies Interred. The fragments of pottery were being examined by a representative of tiie British School at Athens. ‘ Among the small examples of plastic art which have been found in the Hypogaeum are a reclining figure in terracotta, and some mutilated smaller figures, closely resembling the larger statuettes of Maltese limestone discovered at the base of an altar in the central part of Hagiar-Kim. There were seven of these statuettes found close together, one a standing figure larger than the rest, with curious stripes and bands about the middle of the body, two in long garments, and four seated figures, apparently nude. All the figures are headless, though In two cases, instead of a broken surface at the neck, there are a worked depression and small holes, probably serving to fasten in a head. The workmanship is not very rude, although the extremities are generally formless stumps, with toes and digits only indicated in a few cases. These hands and feet are always curiously small and attenuated, and contrast strikingly In this respect with the extreme fatness of the limbs and of the other parts of the body. Much work has been done to make a practical approach to the Hypogaeum; and to carry further excavations towards the entrance, two of the houses built on the ground above were bought by the British government In one of the chambers there remain

both upon walls and ceiling some pattern decoration, which I sketched. It Is painted in a dull ochreous red upon the bare surface. The chambers are neither very small nor very large, but the floors vary from about twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, and perhaps their most striking feature is that some of the walls are curved vertically as well as laterally. .

The hall or chamber is about thirty feet below the ground "level. In general shape it Is an Irregular apse with niches and other chambers opening from it It has a kind of double corona, corresponding In buildings to a projection of the upper parts of a cornice, which is especially curious, as is also the division of the floor (already in two levels connected by a step) by a deep vertical cutting several feet wide. There is a diversity in the doorways, or entrance openings, some of which are so cut as to present the appearance of a lintel upon square side columns, and some the appearance of supporting the superstructure without any lintel. It was here for four hours one night I sat alone in the silence working at my copperplate. ' The permanence of stone, and consequently the durability of at least the forms of all human Ideas expressed In that medium, appeals as something Invested with the spirit of that bordercountry which Iles between mortality and Infinite endurance. So gods in stone lend to its very substance some quality of the deities they represent; and homes or treasure-houses, tombs or temples, when cut or builded in massive, imperishable rock, challenge the wonderment and speculation of future ages with the mysterious triune power of curiosity, respect, and awe—to ravel out their purposes, and to discover. or at least imagine, the kind of men who hewed them with their hands. It was formerly agreed among archaelogists that all the most ancient antiquities of Malta, Including such sanctuaries as that of Hagiar-Kim, were of Phoenician origin; but that belief has been almost entirely aban-

doned, and in his exhaustive study of the prehistoric remains of Malta, which was, however, written before the discovery of the Hypogaeum at Paula, Professor Mayr shows that the construction of the Maltese sanctuaries Is entirely at variance with Phoenician peculiarities. That there are In Malta plenty of Phoenician tombs and other remains of Phoenician colonization Is obvious enough, but these less developed forms are unlike them, and, even had they been Identical with earlier stages of Phoenician art, would not rfave been introduced by colonists or traders at a later stage of development. In a recent article Mr. G. Hogarth has described the rise in pre-Homeric times of an Aegean civilization which culminated during the age of bronze In the apogee of Cnossus, and paved the way for the development of historic Greece. In Malta modern researches, collated with the results of archaeloglcal study In Sardinia, in-the Balearic Islands and In the southeast of Spain, suggest the growth of a civilization never attaining such advanced culture, but persisting through long ages with striking tenacity and individual character, and surviving as a lingering tradition to this our day. The discovery of the Hypogaeum at Paula, whatever may have been the exact use of its mysterious chambers with their strangely curved walls, adds another and most Important testimony to this theory of an early western Mediterranean civilization, which Professor Mayr traces from Malta, be yond the limits named above, to the northwestern coasts of France, England and Ireland, and as far north as the Orkney and Shetland Islands.

UNDERGROUND WORKINGS OR AN UNKNOWN CIVILIZATION

A SMALL RECLINING FIGURE IN TERRA-COTTA