“The temples here are extraordinary, and they have found as many as thirty Goddess figures, some of them ten feet high. You can’t argue that some more advanced civilization passed through here and built the temples, because there are no temples that date to the time these were built that are even remotely like them. They are absolutely unique. You’d think the Maltese would be proud of that. And whether they like it or not, there is a very long tradition of worship of a Great Mother Goddess throughout the Mediterranean that extended long after the temple builders of Malta, to the era of recorded history—to Roman times essentially.
“She was worshipped under many different names, and the rituals may have varied, but the pattern of Her worship is strikingly similar.”
“Which is?” I asked. This was all new to me, as it obviously was for the parents of Malta.
“The Great Goddess, representing the power of nature, is usually associated with a child, usually Her own, divine but of lesser status. This child never attains real adulthood. He remains forever a youth. But he often becomes the consort of the Goddess as well as Her child. The young god dies, disappears from earth. The Goddess, in extreme mourning, searches for him all over the earth, and often as far as the underworld. While She searches, life on earth goes awry. Because She is the power of earth, crops don’t grow, animals and men cease to procreate. Finally a divine deal is struck. The youth, the so-called dying god, is reunited with his mother/consort for a part of the year, and must spend the rest of the year in the realm of the dead.
“And so we have these divine pairings, Great Goddess and dying god, through much of ancient history. Inanna of Sumer, Queen of Heaven and Earth, and her Dumuzi, Ishtar or Astarte with Tammuz, the warlike Anath with Ba’al in Mesopotamia, Isis and Osiris in Egypt, Aphrodite and Adonis in Greece, Cybele and Attis in Rome. Their sacred marriage and the god’s death and return represent the cycles of Nature, and provided the basis for earthly kingship for many centuries. Earthly kings took their right to rule through the institution of the sacred marriage to the Goddess: They became, in effect, the earthly embodiment of the dying god. The power of the Goddess diminished over time, of course, and gradually the patriarchal gods took over, but this does not take away from the tremendous power the Great Goddess exerted over life for millennia.
“If people here think learning about this tradition gives their daughters ‘ideas,” then so be it. I think it’s a good antidote to all the Adam and Evil kind of stuff they get in church schools. Neanderthals!“
“You’re not teaching anymore, but you’re going on with the play, I take it.”
“The show must go on, don’t they say? I don’t much mind about the teaching job. I’m on sabbatical and I can survive without the income. But I think the play’s important, and so, obviously, do the girls. They’ve rebelled, as you can see, and `turned up despite their parents. Warms my heart, I’ll tell you.”
“What happened to the temple builders, by the way?” I asked, thinking about the scene in the play about the temple builders where the music is supposed to end abruptly and the lights go out quickly.
“You mean did a group of parents put a stop to the temple building?” She hooted. “Seriously, nobody really knows. All activity just stopped. Maybe famine, drought, a plague of some sort. One of the great mysteries of history!”
When we got to Mnajdra, we found the site had been closed off to all but our group and a number of workmen who were erecting a large awning designed to protect the guests while they were watching the performance. Several members of the police and army were watching over the proceedings. Security for this performance was going to be very tight, that was clear. A guard met the bus and checked off each of our names as we disembarked, then all our cases, mine with the wardrobe and all Victor’s electrical equipment, were opened and searched.
We got to work. We did a quick run-through of one of the later scenes in which two of the girls represent women trying to find enough food to feed their families during the German blockade of the island during the Second World War. I knew the story of Malta’s heroism during the war: The day after Mussolini joined forces with Hitler, the bombing of Malta had continued until the island acquired the dubious distinction of being the most bombed out place on the planet. Such was its strategic importance in the Mediterranean that in a two-month period, twice as many bombs fell on Malta as fell on London in a year at the height of the blitz.
Rationing began in 1941, the island completely cut off by the Axis blockade. In August of 1942, two weeks before the island would have had to surrender, five out of an original convoy of fourteen Allied ships limped into the Grand Harbour with supplies. For its heroism, and in recognition of the terrible suffering the islanders had sustained, Malta was awarded the George Cross, the only nation ever to receive it.
I knew that the islanders had suffered terribly, on the brink of starvation, bombed day and night from Italy. But I had never heard the story so poignantly told, seen as it was now by these students, and even though I’d heard the scene before, I was again quite moved by it. It was one of the parts that Sophia had written.
“This scene is quite wonderful, you know,” I said to Sophia. “You have a rare talent for this. Maybe you should think about a writing career.”
She blushed. “Thank you. Dr. Stanhope said that too. I’d really like to try to write. But my father wouldn’t let me. He thinks I should get married soon and stay here and raise a family. He’s not too keen on Anthony either. If he goes away to school, my father won’t let me go with him. It’s a problem,” she sighed.
I’m a firm believer in the Prime Directive, whether it’s applied to intergalactic journeys or to the kind of travel the rest of us do: that is, that you should leave a place the way you found it and not do anything to affect the future. I realize this rule would severely restrict the activities of the Anna Stanhopes among us, to say nothing of the missionary zeal of various religious organizations and those nations with aspirations to empire. But there it is. I could not help feeling, though, on hearing Sophia’s words, that the world had not changed much since Marissa Cassar had decided to do what her father wanted rather than following her heart, and that a little education about the Great Goddess might be just what Sophia and her friends needed.
I left Sophia to help Victor, who was working away at his lights. I could see he really was good at “electricals.” I helped him string wires as the girls rehearsed and he worried a great deal about the exact placement of the poles. Camilleri and his assistant, Esther whatever her name was, were also helpful. They’d arranged for the grassy area in front of the site to be cleared and smoothed out so chairs could be placed there, and for the hydro people to string a temporary line all the way from the restaurant at the entrance to the temple site way up the hill. Most of the time, though, they fussed a great deal about the comfort of the guests. Camilleri watched as a couple of heaters were placed in the tents, since evenings were still cool.
“We’ll have a bar set up for them at the back of the tent,” he explained to me. “Champagne, caviar, the best, of course.”