Mysterious Malta

"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

It was a short 2 hour flight from Istanbul to Malta, right over France, Italy and Sicily. Beautiful views!  After a short immigration process (and no hassle with baggage claim because of traveling light) we got our car and headed to our first town, Mdina. Driving here is not so easy. Since Malta was an English colony until 50 years ago, they drive on the left side of the road. Add to this that there are a zillion cars here and you have a not so easy time of driving. There is no way I could do this without my excellent navigator, Amy, and a really detailed map. You ALWAYS have to think, "LEFT SIDE, LEFT SIDE, LEFT SIDE of the road!"  It is like picking up your ukulele and starting to play left handed, the main differnce being that if you f**k up you could kill yourself and your dearest. But anyway, we made it safely to our hotel right outside the walls of Mdina. This is Malta's old capital from Roman days and a bit of a living museum. Malta's elite families live here and the same families have lived in the same houses for hundreds of years. There are some nice restaurants here and we had for dinner goat cheese ravioli, octopus linguini and braised rabbit, the last being a Maltese speciality. 

Scene of Rabat, the town next to Mdina...

For Friday's excursion, we went in search of Malta's "Cart Ruts". These are mysterious parallel groves in the limestone, most being over 4,000 years old. They are the width of a normal cart track, but some are quite deep, as much as two feet. They were probably created by sleighs carrying loads, as we are right at a large quarry that has been in use for thousands of years. Old man made caves here attest to that fact. Of course, Ancient Alien Theorists have there own ideas about this odd place...

Today, we visited the amazing, amazing Hypogeum.  Wow, It was carved out of the solid limestone gradually chamber by chamber about 5,000 years ago and used as a burial center for over 1,000 years. Pretty much each major chamber looks like an actual constructed temple, but it's all mirage, it's carved. With bone and stone tools only.

Archaeologists figure that over 7,000 people were buried here. It consists of three levels carved out of living rock and probably took 500 years or more to build the whole thing. This room is called the "Holy of Holys" and was all carved out of solid rock and is a testament to early man's ingenuity, craftsmanship, artistic ability and dedication.

This is a very special place to visit, only ten people in a group each hour. The place was like a temple sunk on the brow of the hill, three stories deep under its main entrance, and as you walk from spot to spot, and as the audio guide explains things, the soft dim lighting shifts to reveal new depths, into rooms you never saw. In many places red ochre drawings still glow overhead. There's often a coating of water so it can glisten. Amazing secret sophisticated place to store the bodies of ancestors, and from the carvings, seems like the ceremonial religious part must have been part of the early human era when the gifts of women, and the female aspects of the divine, got at least as much focus as the male aspects.

They brought the red ochre and the special stone for carving figures like this woman from other areas of Europe. They carved the stone walls in ways to accentuate sound. They were indeed very very sophisticated in what they did here... All carved in the candlelit dark! It's a very trippy place is all I can say. Since only ten people go in at a time and maybe only 70 or 80 a day, we reserved our tickets four or five months ago. So glad we did as we really had no idea it would be this wonderful to walk down into.