I recalled Dr. Stanhope had said these complexes were built between about 3600 and 2500 b.c.e., by people who had neither copper nor bronze, and who used only blades made from local stones or from flint mined in Pantelleria over 125 miles away, an incredible feat when you thought about it. She had also said the temples were designed in the shape of the Goddess Herself, although I had difficulty conceptualizing what exactly that meant.
I wandered about the site for a while, marveling at the workmanship, enjoying the shade provided by the massive stones. An old woman also resting in the shade smiled at me and gestured in the direction of a path that led toward the sea. I followed her pointing finger and walked down a long stone causeway to a second site nestled on a snug promontory on a steep cliff well over a hundred yards above the sea. I took this to be Mnajdra.
Walking through the portal flanked by large stones, I suddenly felt I was indeed in a sacred place. From time to time we come to places which contain a special power for us. Where each individual feels this power, this mystery, probably says more about the person than the place. I consider myself fortunate to have been touched by this feeling more than once, not, as life would have it, in the monuments deemed spiritual by our society, but instead in the ancient remains of past civilizations.
Mnajdra was such a place for me. I thought about the people who built it, 11,000 of them at the height of the temple building phase Dr. Stanhope had spoken of; how they had chosen this site, perhaps because it also spoke to them; how they had eked out an existence on these rocky shores while seeking to transcend their physical existence through the concrete expression of their spiritual longing in the carving and placement of each of these stones.
I suddenly understood what Dr. Stanhope had meant about entering the body of the Goddess each time you entered a temple. Viewed from the sky above, I realized, a smaller chamber at the top would be Her head, the rounded chamber in the middle Her encircling arms, the much bigger chamber at the entrance Her large belly and thighs. The body of the Great Goddess of Malta, I knew, was large, like her Paleolithic forebears, a symbol of fecundity. Fat Ladies, Anthony had called them.
Outside again, I found a place with a breeze, overlooking the site and the sea, and sat, lost in my thoughts. More than anything else I thought about Lucas. His specialty was Mayan archaeology, of course, but he had a wonderful sense of exploration and delight in new experiences, and I thought how much he would have loved it here.
He would have known, without being told, how the temples were constructed, what kind of roof had covered them, and he would have had a theory about each and every component and artifact. I’d noticed a pitted stone monument at Hagar Qim— I’d assumed it to be an altar—on which was carved what could have been a spinal column but more likely was a plant of some kind growing out of a pot. Lucas would have told me all about tree cults, I’m sure, or about something similar from his part of the world. I could almost see him standing there, tall and slim against the sunlight, his long dark hair streaked with grey, dressed in black jeans and T-shirt as he almost always was. I could picture the way he’d look at me as he spoke, the shape of his arms as he pointed out the features of the sight.
I suddenly missed him so much, I could feel a constriction in my throat and a burning behind my eyes. I could only hope that halfway round the world at his archaeological site, he was thinking of me at that moment too.
These chains of memory were broken by the sounds, faint above the sound of the sea below the site, of giggling schoolgirls, Sophia among them, who soon hove into view on the causeway above me.
At the head of this delegation, in print shirtwaist dress and straw hat, was the redoubtable Dr. Anna Stanhope. Sophia saw me immediately and rushed to give me a hug, introducing me to five or six young girls with her, and then to Dr. Stanhope.
After a minute or two of polite chatter, Dr. Stanhope sent the girls into the temple, reminding them what to look for, and then sat down on a stone near me.
“Nice place you’ve found here,” she said rather breathlessly, wiping her brow with a lace handkerchief, which she then delicately put down the front of her dress like a Victorian spinster. “Hot,” she added.
“It is,” I agreed. “But it’s a wonderful place and I should thank you for bringing me here.”
She looked surprised. “I attended your lecture last night,” I explained.
“Did you? Did you like it? Set some of them back on their bottoms I daresay.” She hooted.
I had to smile. “I believe you did,” I agreed.
“I’m a feminist, you know. A placard-carrying, bra-burning, raving feminist. Came to it rather late, I’m afraid. But you know what they say. Better late than never. Or more likely, there’s no fool like an old fool.” She hooted again. She wasn’t that old, actually. At close range she appeared to be in her mid-fifties.
“Explains a lot, though. Feminism, I mean. Why I never got the senior academic posts I wanted. Why I had to work so hard to get my papers published while my male colleagues, most of them louts, soared through academia.
“Best I could do was head mistress of a girls’ school. But I’ll get my revenge. Inculcating feminist values in hundreds of little British schoolgirls.” Another laugh.
“What brought you to Malta?” I asked, changing the subject. I consider myself a feminist too, but there was an edge to this conversation that I didn’t want to deal with.
“Sabbatical,” she replied. “I’ve had a few in my day, of course. Never been able to get away before, though. Lived with my mum. I’ve been—what’s that horrid expression?— primary caregiver, that’s it. She died last year. I was sorry, of course. We’d been so close. But I felt… free I guess, for the first time. I’d heard my dad talk about Malta when I was a little girl. He died fifteen years ago. That’s when I moved back in with my mum. He’d been stationed here during World War Two—terrible time they had here, nearly starved to death you know, the Maltese, until the British broke the blockade.
“Anyway, my subject is history. And this place has a fascinating one, not the least of which is its place as a center of Goddess worship. So here I am. How about you? Canadian, I expect. The accent.”
“I am,” I said. I told her about my project in Malta, and how I expected it to be completed in a few days, but that I might—the thought was forming as I spoke—stay on a few more days to look around. We talked in a desultory fashion for a while, the heat of the afternoon making us both a little languid, and then we sat in companionable silence enjoying the site.
As we did so, a man appeared on the causeway above us. With all this talk of feminism and Goddess worship, he seemed a little out of place, and indeed he was the first male I’d seen since the ticket taker at the entrance. The man was attractive, almost movie star good-looking actually, well dressed in a nicely designed lightweight suit, Italian cut I’d say, dark complexion and hair, and he wore those reflecting sunglasses. He reminded me a little of Martin Galea. As we sat, he slowly scanned the site, his gaze resting on Dr. Stanhope and me for only a second. That done, he took off his sunglasses for a moment and carefully polished them. Then he walked around the perimeter of the site and was temporarily lost from view.
“Time to get going,” Dr. Stanhope said, hefting her large frame from the stone. “Come along, girls,” she cried. It sounded like “gulls” to my North American ears. The giggling schoolgirls gathered round.