WELCOME

This blog is dedicated to Malta - my island home. My aim is not to bore you with history but to share my thoughts and a few facts together with a photo or two. For a more in -depth background of the island please go here. The purpose of this blog is not to point out the short-comings of the island. There are plenty that do that already. My wish is to show you the beauty of an island at the cross roads of the Mediterranean, a melting pot of history; a place where fact and fiction are sometimes fused to create unique myths and legends; a country that has been conquered so many times that our culture is a mish mesh of the lands that surround us and of lands far away. I confess that my greatest desire is to make you fall in love with this tiny enchanting island.

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Sunday, 24 February 2013

The Tombs of Our Fathers

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You may all be wondering why I am sharing a photo of what seems to be a square cut out into the rocks. For many years these ‘formations’ puzzled me. When left to its own devices,  it is very rare for nature to form squares. But finally the mystery, such as it was, was solved. A few years ago I met a lady who explained who had made these squares. What we are seeing today is actually the top of a shaft that was cut into the rock. The shaft descends vertically to a tomb that is dug at right angles to the shaft and straight into the rock. From artifacts found inside the tombs it was concluded that they date back to Punic times. Appropriately, the tombs  face the setting sun. It all seems so obvious now that I wonder how I never figured it out for myself.

Punic Tomb,  Mtarfa

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