The World Rent Asunder

'War of the Worlds - Men Hunting' by Robert Czarny, 2006.

London: 3 March 2022 – In January this year I read H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1898) for the first time. It is one of those ubiquitous books which everyone knows, but which lots of people have never actually read. This was something which struck me when the recent BBC TV dramatization was aired a year or two ago. It faithfully set the story of the novel in its own time and its original place, unlike the most recent Hollywood adaptation, starring Tom Cruise in 2005, which transposes the action to modern day America. Or the earlier classic Hollywood version of 1953, starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, which also changed the three-legged Martian machines into boomerang-shaped flying saucers with cobra-headed heat ray guns. While watching the BBC version, I commented to my mother that I’d never read the original novel, but that I thought I really should someday, because the idea that H.G. Wells could have dreamt up such a fantastical fictional premise of aliens with advanced technology invading the Earth during the late nineteenth-century’s ‘Age of Steam’ seemed so far removed from our present-day conceptions of sci-fi. Noting this absent-minded musing of mine, my mother bought the book and happily surprised me with it as a gift for my birthday a couple of months later. But sadly, when I finally read Wells’ novel at the start of this year, I had no idea how tragically apt a moment it would end up being; to read such a book when the world was unwittingly drifting closer towards the edge of a moment of unthinkable change – a change wrought by the potential prospect of a third world war – when, at the end of the following month, Russia invaded the Ukraine.

 

As a kid growing up during the 1980s, as for many people of my age, my main point of reference for Wells’ War of the Worlds was Jeff Wayne’s musical version (1978), which we used to listen to as a family in the car. I’ve always remembered the sinister moment narrated by Richard Burton when the Martian cylinder begins to unscrew. For some reason this moment really captured my imagination. Like many kids, I was obsessed with the idea of extra-terrestrials and alien invasions. A fascination first fed by the films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. (1982), as well as old television series, such as The Invaders (1967-1968) and more recent ones (at that time), such as V (1984-1985). Later on, of course, there was The X-Files (1993-2002). I always knew there was an element of Cold War paranoia hidden beneath the surface of such films, especially old ones such as the 1953 version of War of the Worlds, and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), or Invaders from Mars (1953). The common menace behind all of these films and TV shows was the unknown; that creeping insidious fear which permeated the Cold War – not knowing what the other side was up to, not knowing what they might be planning, but knowing that they had the means to destroy everyone and everything should they choose to do so. That threat of nuclear Armageddon with just the press of a button. It was something which anyone alive in those decades post-World War 2 up until the end of the twentieth century, when the Cold War finally seemed to come to a (largely) peaceful close in the period between 1989-1991 with the collapse of the USSR.

 

H.G. Wells (National Portrait Gallery)

For H.G. Wells the menace which inspired him with such dreadful visions of the future was something different, but something which nonetheless was at the very root of what the Cold War later became. For Wells, his fear was the dehumanising mechanisation of death. In certain ways, his novel foreshadowed the horrors unleashed on the grim battlefields of the First World War, which took place only a couple of decades after the publication of War of the Worlds in 1898. The incomprehensible truth of mankind’s inhumanity towards itself is envisaged as manifested in the form of a callously methodical and unsympathetic alien invader. And, in unleashing such a cold-blooded enemy upon the unsuspecting Earth, Wells’ very matter-of-factly - if somewhat macabrely - describes our familiar world being rent asunder, the everyday world torn to shreds by enormous three-legged alien machines stalking the land from sleepy Surrey into the bustling metropolis of London, which is reduced to ashes via war and anarchy as the systems and institutions of society crumble and collapse under the relentless onslaught of total war. In this very specific way, Wells clearly foresaw the modern ‘Blitzkrieg’ of the Second World War as much as he foresaw the senseless carnage of the battlefields being gassed during the First World War. Watching the senselessness of the current Russian military advance on multiple fronts into a peaceful Ukraine, the present war seems just as inexplicable as it is horrifying.

 

When I read War of the Worlds at the start of this year, I’d been surprised to see my hometown in northwest London given two mentions in the course of the novel. The majority of the action in the story takes place in Surrey, moving onto southwest and then central London, with an interlude in which we follow the course of the narrator’s brother, who eventually escapes England as a desperate refugee onboard a paddle steamer which manages to cross the English Channel to the Continent, despite being pursued by the Martian machines which are bravely opposed in a suicidal last stand made by a Royal Navy dreadnought. The macabre appeal of this truly remarkable novel is to picture the vivid descriptions of our sane and orderly world uprooted and utterly smashed by uncontrollable and unopposable forces. But as the events of the Second World War in particular should have taught us, such a flight of the imagination is not so fanciful. Those events are still within living memory for my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. It was the defining global event of their lifetimes, as was also the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962. I’d always thought my generation’s defining moment was that hopeful and optimistic era which witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, but since then we’ve had the shocking event of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the USA, as well as the wars, insurgencies and subsequent terrorist attacks which have followed in their wake; then the current Corona virus pandemic, along with the increasingly worsening effects of global climate change as a backdrop to all of this, in just these first few decades of the 21^st century. And now we have the megalomaniacal madness made manifest of Vladimir Putin, an unopposed autocrat ordering his troops to invade a neighbouring sovereign state, all the while with his finger held poised over the nuclear button, as he has duly warned us.

 

Given such a clear and unequivocal threat, if we believe and sufficiently fear Putin’s resolve, our sense of existential dread certainly feels more acute now than it has at any point during the last 40 years. It is akin to that deeply sinister moment of hearing the cylinder slowly starting to unscrew itself in War of the Worlds. During my childhood my family always knew that in the event of a nuclear war we’d almost certainly be instantly vaporised because we lived only a matter of a few miles away from the NATO command centre at Northwood. There were undoubtedly a couple of nuclear warheads sitting in Soviet missile silos with our names written on them. In the more recent post-Cold War era, I’ve often wondered what has happened to those missiles. We understood that the nuclear deterrent had been downgraded on both of the formerly opposing sides of the Iron Curtain, but I’ve long been fascinated by the subsequent rise of the enigma that is Vladimir Putin. Over the last twenty or so years, reading articles speculating upon the psychological implications of his having been a KGB officer stationed in East Germany at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and how he and his comrades had repeatedly called Moscow for instructions when the protestors were hammering at the doors of the Soviet headquarters where he was rapidly shredding documents, but the line was dead. The only reply they received was silence. And not so very long thereafter the USSR itself was no longer a voice on the global stage. All that was left was the seemingly insubstantial ghost of a once great power. Only a year or two ago I marvelled as I read an article about the Soviet military base at Vogelsang, close to Berlin, which is now a ruin sought out by psycho-geographers and urbexers, but which was still manned and operational when I first visited Berlin in February 1993 on my second visit to the former GDR. Empty swimming pools, broken windows, trees growing through crumbling concrete, and paint peeling from sun-bleached Soviet Realist statues and murals. Looking at the accompanying photos of the base in its current derelict state it looked to me like something from a different era altogether, not like something which had been fully functioning in my own lifetime.

 

I’m currently living close to Westminster Abbey. Many years ago, a friend of mine who worked in the House of Commons told me that one of the reasons why the Jubilee Line extension on the London Underground system was so delayed in opening was because the construction workers had not correctly anticipated just how long it would take to punch holes through the former nuclear bunker which had been built beside the Houses of Parliament during the height of the Cold War. If you go into Westminster Tube Station and ride the escalators down to the Jubilee Line platforms, you can indeed still see the remnants of what looks like a much older concrete structure behind the newer beams and pillars of the station complex, so there may well be some truth to that conjecture. Hence, if Putin does press the button, Westminster Tube Station might not be too bad a place to hurry to during such an eventuality. If he does though, I think, remembering the sobering effect of watching Raymond Brigg’s cartoon of When the Wind Blows (1986), I’d rather disappear in the white heat of the blinding flash than survive in such a blisteringly bleak world thereafter. Scientists say the nuclear weapons which are extant nowadays are so far in advance of the power of any which have previously been used in anger at either Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the nuclear tests of the 1950s, that we probably wouldn’t stand a chance if these weapons were put into action. There are no preparations we could possibly make for such an eventuality, and so – much like in the 1980s – we can only ‘keep calm and carry on’, as the British like to say.

 

'War of the Worlds - Thunder Child' by Robert Czarny, 2005.

What is more staggering perhaps, is to realise how the world seems to have sleepwalked into this current situation. Some say the West has handled Putin all wrong from the start. Rebuffing his friendly overtures towards the European Union and to NATO, determined to treat Russia as a second-rate world power, was arrogance and folly. Essentially NATO’s advance to the East (contrary to promises apparently made to Putin), as Vladimir Pozner suggests, has enacted a Cuban missile crisis in reverse. While others insist that there is no such thing as an “ex-KGB officer.” Putin was never a man to be trusted. In essence, he has simply been a ticking time bomb who has now reached the end of a very long-smouldering fuse. Time’s up. Whichever way you choose to look at it, this may well have been the inevitable outcome of either point of view. I recall a BBC TV interview with the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in 2019 (I think). In which he was asked if he thought the world was a safer place since the end of the Cold War, and he replied ‘far from it’ – he thought the world ‘infinitely more dangerous now’ because those same weapons still existed, yet they were now more powerful, and they were also considerably more vulnerable than they’d ever been compared to those former times. Anything could very easily happen these days, he said. He was perhaps referring to global threats from terrorism arising from people with deluded ideological agendas, but he was (perhaps understandably) non-committal on pertinent questions concerning Russia’s current leadership when asked in such a context.

 

By Morten Morland (The Sunday Times)

Gorbachev was right, though. Of late the world has seemingly been increasingly poised, only a knife edge away from the utterly irrational impinging upon the everyday, as the events of 9/11 clearly taught us – anything really can happen. So many strange and previously unthinkable things have occurred in our recent times – think of the storming of the US Capitol only a year or so ago. Anarchy lies just the other side of this thin curtain called reality which we draw around ourselves and our societies. Only a week ago the people of Ukraine were living their lives like the rest of us – going to work, going to school, walking the dog, riding trains, commuting to work, going shopping, driving cars, listening to music, watching TV, eating dinner, doing all the normal things people and families do in a sane and stable world, but now they have been utterly uprooted. The elderly and those with young children fleeing from harm’s way are now refugees, while those who have stayed or are returning to fight and resist the invader are all in mortal danger. It seems so utterly unimaginable.

 

Simple misinformation, as well as active disinformation, threaten our understanding of what is going on and could so easily help to spin things out of control due to the current credulous nature of unfiltered news and opinion, much like Orson Welles’ infamously all-too-realistic radio broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938. We’ve no idea of what Vladimir Putin is capable of doing. We watch dumbfounded, in fear and aghast at the devastation he has unleashed upon the poor people of Ukraine. Ordinary people, like those the world over, whose lives were much the same as yours and mine only a week ago. We watch in horror. We watch feeling powerless. We witness the inhumanity. And I can’t help reflecting how those fictional three-legged machines with their heat rays stalking the Surrey countryside, burning up the streets and villages for no sensible reason no longer seem quite so alien or extraordinary now. It could so easily be anyone of us, any of our own hometowns. We’ve long watched passively as this sort of thing has happened in other places both near and far, and those who have tried to protest or warn of this kind of thing have simply been ignored by those who have the real power to do something meaningful and just about it – but somehow this time it is different. This time it could very well be a moment of epochal change, as if we’ve not already had enough of those arising in this increasingly deracinated and deeply tarnished new century.

 

Something is deeply wrong with the way our world operates. In H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds it was the smallest and seemingly the most inconsequential of organisms which eventually managed to overthrow the madness of the inhuman aggression which confronted the world, perhaps now it will be the right thoughts and right actions of all of us, no matter how small or individual we are, which can only be magnified if we band together and oppose the tyrannies of those who would have us living unquestioningly and according to their terms only, using our fears as the source of their strength and personal profits. Now is the wake-up call, telling us it is high time for us to shake off our apathy and our atomisation. Vaclav Havel called this social philosophy ‘Living in Truth.’ It’s worked in the past and it can work again if we stand strong, work together and will it to do so. We only have one world, and we clearly need greater and more inclusive unity in order to make it a better place. Whatever the outcome of this unpardonable act of aggression against Ukraine eventually is, it seems clear that our world will need to change not just accordingly, but hopefully radically, and radically for the better, in the wake of this present emergency. But that will depend on all of us doing what is right, and by all of us no longer allowing those who do wrong by others to get away with it.

Slava Ukraini! 

'Peace' by Waldemar Walczak

NB - At the time of posting (2022): I've not been able to find out who the artist is who created the two illustrations used above (of the three-legged Martian machines attacking London and being faced down by the 'Thunder Child') - I sourced them from GoodReads, but if anyone knows please let me know and I'll credit them properly. UPDATE (2024): I've now found out that the artist is Robert Czarny (c.2005-2006).

Megaliths of Malta

 

Writing in 1924, the anthropologist, Leonard Dudley Buxton, observed: “The student of human history will find many remarkable things in Malta.” – He’s not wrong. For anyone with an interest in history, Malta is a genuine ‘Treasure Island.’ My first memory of hearing about this remarkable place was from my grandmother. When I was a child, she used to keep a handwritten list pinned by a magnet to the door of her refrigerator. It was a list of all the places she wanted to visit and all the adventurous the things she wanted to do. Once she’d done them, she used to get me to cross them off using a red pencil. Two of the things I remember listed on that piece of paper were a flight on Concorde and a visit to the Island of Malta. My grandmother knew I was very interested in history; hence I remember her showing me photographs of her and my grandfather riding the beautiful old buses (which until relatively recently were still in service on the island), visiting crumbling castles and sun-kissed harbours filled with beautiful sailing boats. Malta certainly did appeal to me. To my young ears there was a lyrical, lilting magic to the sound of its name, like honeycomb and milk chocolate – Malta. It was something I never forgot, and so, several decades later, having just finished my masters degree in history, I decided it was high time to finally see Malta for myself.

 

Old buses at Mdina, Malta

Malta is a small archipelago of five islands. The two main islands are Malta and Gozo, with two smaller islands, Comino and Cominetto, set in the channel between them; plus there is also a small outlying island, Filfla, located off the southwest coast of Malta. It is only a modest archipelago. Malta is about 95 miles square, and Gozo just 25 square miles. Consequently, it is the perfect size to explore during a one or two week holiday. I got myself a bus pass which enabled me to hop on and off the buses which frequently crisscross the island, and this proved to be the best way to navigate from one historical site to another because there are many interesting places to see. Human occupation on the island goes back to at least the Neolithic period when a flourishing culture constructed a series of unique and unusual megalithic ‘buildings’ and subterranean crypts, some of which predate other well known Neolithic sites such as Stonehenge in England. Many centuries later the island was home to the Hospitaller Knights of St. John who were displaced here from the island of Rhodes when Rhodes fell to the Ottomans in 1523. The Knights of St. John are responsible for most of the formidable fortifications which can still be seen in the main town of Valletta. In more recent history the island was known as ‘Fortress Malta’ during World War 2, when it formed an important naval base for the Allied resistance to the invading Nazi military machine in the Mediterranean arena.

 

'Gallarijia' balconies in Valletta

I spent my first day on Malta exploring the old town of Valletta which is a warren of narrow streets filled with fascinating old buildings, gardens, churches and ramparts. It is a picturesque place to wander around, the streets overhung by distinctive ‘gallarijia’ balconies, and plenty of churches to sneak a peek inside as you find them when strolling the back streets. The Co-Cathedral of St. John is well worth a visit with its grandly elaborate Barqoue interior lavishly decked out in gold, marble and bright paint. The Cathedral’s Oratory holds two marvellous paintings by Caravaggio – the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, painted in 1608, is Caravaggio’s largest canvas and also the only one of his works which he signed; plus, a portrait of St. Jerome writing, perhaps showing him translating the Bible from Greek into Latin. It is one of two versions of this subject by him which I particularly like. When Caravaggio was on Malta painting these works the Cathedral would have looked much more austere. Its Baroque decorations were added later over the course of many years.

 

The Co-Cathedral of St. John, Valletta

Beheading of St. John the Baptist, by Caravaggio

Caravaggio arrived here on Malta in July 1607 and became a novice of the Order of St. John. He was a brilliant young firebrand, noted for his prodigious talents in painting and picking fights. Having killed a well-connected man in Rome the year before, he fled Italy and found sanctuary on the island. Soon after his arrival he was involved in yet another brawl, this time with six other Italian knights in which a knight of high rank was shot and seriously wounded. Caravaggio was imprisoned in Fort St. Angelo, but managed a daring escape (perhaps aided by influential friends) in which he scaled the fort’s massive walls using ropes. He then fled once again, this time on a boat bound for Sicily. From here he made his way north to Naples, but his life on the run ended somewhat mysteriously when he died, it is thought from a fever, at the age of 39.

 

Saint Jerome, by Caravaggio

Caravaggio’s effect upon European painting was profound, particularly on Mattia Preti, who later painted the Cathedral’s six-section barrel-vaulted ceiling. Noted for its realism Caravaggio’s style broke with the norms of religious painting, note the absence of chubby little cherubs and winged angels in many of his works. His subjects can often be vividly gruesome, choosing to focus on beheadings and the like, but he is also capable of scenes of great serenity – as his two paintings of St. John and St. Jerome found here in the Cathedral each amply attest. Whilst I was staying on Malta I found an interesting book about Caravaggio’s time on the island, Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta, by Keith Sciberras and David M. Stone (2006).

 

Judith and Holofernes, by Valentin de Boulogne

Heraclitus, by ?

Malta’s National Museum of Fine Art (which I think has moved premises since I visited in 2014) also houses some really magnificent paintings. Here the works which struck me most were Valentin de Boulogne’s Judith and Holofernes, which shows clear influences of Caravaggio’s treatment of the same gruesome subject, and a very moving painting of an old man weeping, titled Heraclitus – which sadly I failed to note down the name of the artist (and I’ve since been unable to find any reference to it on-line. If anyone knows who it is by, please post a comment to let me know!). There are also two lovely and evocative views of Malta done by the Scottish artist, David Roberts, who is perhaps best know for his distinctive nineteenth-century views of ruined temples and other monuments which he painted whilst on a tour of Egypt.

 

Valletta Harbour, by David Roberts

The 'Sleeping Lady' from the Hypogeum

The National Museum of Archaeology in the centre of Valletta is also well worth a visit before heading out to the various archaeological sites of interest for which Malta is most famous. A large bust of Themistocles ‘Temi’ Zammit, the father of scientific archaeology on Malta and former Director of the Museum, greets you as you arrive. Here artefacts from Malta’s Neolithic Period (5000 BC) up to the Phoenician Period (400 BC), including the ‘Sleeping Lady’ (from the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum), the ‘Venus of Malta’ (from Ħaġar Qim Temples), Bronze Age daggers (from Tarxien Temples), and a Phoenician anthropomorphic sarcophagus, help to orient you and explain some of the temple sites before you visit. When I visited, perhaps taking its cue from Neil MacGregor, the Museum had put on a special exhibition illustrating the ‘History of Malta in 100 Objects’, including the George Cross Medal which was given to the island’s population as a whole in recognition of Malta’s key role during World War 2.

 

The George Cross Medal presented to the Island of Malta

Since its independence from Britain in 1964 the George Cross insignia has been incorporated into the national flag of Malta, a curious choice when you consider the fact that the George Cross is very much linked to the British Empire from which the island was then seceding, as well as the fact that Malta already has its own long established and very distinctive signature cruciform insignia – the Maltese Cross, which can be found on Maltese 1 Euro coins. I did read somewhere that this choice might have been made because, when the British Empire became the Commonwealth, it was mooted that Malta might be given British dependency status, in much the same way as Jersey and Guernsey, but in the end Malta was made fully independent instead.

 

Għar Dalam, the 'Cave of Darkness'

If you want to begin a tour of subterranean Malta chronologically then the place to start is the cave at Għar Dalam, which means ‘Cave of Darkness’ – although the cave is far less forbidding than its name might suggest, it is actually quite a nice escape from the sun and heat of the day outside. The cave is said to be one of the first places on the island to be inhabited by humans c.5200 BC. These early settlers are thought to have migrated here from Sicily. Malta is only 93 km from Sicily, apparently close enough to be seen on a very clear day. Excavations of the cave floor have yielded all the typical finds indicative of human settlement, such as human and animal remains, rubbish pits, ceramic sherds, etc., as well as much older faunal remains of animals such as hippos, elephants, bears, foxes and wolves. The archaeologists have left a section of the earth in situ to show the stratigraphy of the cave floor, plus several enormous (and still forming) stalactites and stalagmites. Walking the steps to and from the cave there is an interesting defensive contrast between an old watchtower, built by the Knights Hospitaller, and its near neighbour, a concrete ‘pillbox’ built during World War 2.

 

Knights Hospitaller Watchtower and WW2 Pillbox (above)

The main site of subterranean interest on Malta is, of course, the famous Hypogeum (Ħal Saflieni). I remember my grandmother telling me about this – maybe it appealed to her Irish roots, thinking of similar sites such as Newgrange – because Malta’s Hypogeum is a complex underground burial chamber, or a temple to the dead, its layout reminiscent of the nearby Tarxien Temples. Its construction spanning three distinct phases during the long period between c.3600-2500 BC. The site was discovered in 1899 and first investigated by a Jesuit priest, Father Manwel Magri, but unfortunately his notes regarding his exploratory excavations have since been lost, consequently little is known about his early antiquarian investigations. Temi Zammit began a systematic study of the site in 1910, and he estimated that over its 1000 year period of continuous use the site may have held the mortal remains of around 7000 individuals.

 

Temi Zammit

In order not to upset the environmental preservation of the site, particularly in terms of maintaining its levels of humidity, visitor numbers are carefully regulated. Consequently, it is only possible to visit the site as part of a pre-booked tour. When I decided to go to Malta all of these tours were already fully booked, but I’d read that it was possible to buy tickets the day before for one particular day a week, so I decided to chance my luck and see if I could get one of these tickets. The staff at the museum which sold the tickets advised me to get there early on the day the tickets go on sale because there’s always a long queue. They weren’t kidding either. They said I should get there around 8am, so I got there around 7:30am and there were already 12 people in front of me and 6 more arrived straight on my heels! And the queue continued to lengthen while I waited. I’d been told that there were only 20 tickets for sale, hence it was hard not to speculate how many tickets the persons in front of me might be hoping to purchase. I felt sure most of those in front of me would be buying multiple tickets for friends and family who might not have come with them, plus I thought a couple of people near the front looked like local tour guides or perhaps ticket touts. Of course, there was nothing to stop the first person in the queue purchasing the lot outright. But doubts and uncertainties aside, all I could do was to wait and see and hope the gods of old might favour me with a stroke of luck – and favour me they did. When the place opened at 9am, everyone ahead of me watched as shuffling forward we saw those at the front of the queue leaving triumphant with tickets in hand, but there was no way to know how many they’d bought. As I got closer and closer to the ticket counter I could see people were beginning to leave with disappointed faces and empty hands. But it seemed as though the tickets hadn’t run out yet, and it was only when I got to the ticket counter that I discovered why – there was only a single ticket left. Everyone ahead of me was looking for a pair of tickets or multiples of two. For once, somewhat uncharacteristically, the lonesome traveller was at an advantage. I found out the next day when I arrived at the Hypogeum that the chap at the front of the queue had just bought one ticket for himself and this had thrown the whole system and so secured me my precious ticket.

 

Hypogeum (Heritage Malta)

I was really glad to get that ticket too, because the Hypogeum is well worth the visit and it would be a real shame to go to Malta and not see this singular and remarkable prehistoric site. Here’s what I wrote in my travel diary at the time: “The Hypogeum is truly amazing. A short film at the start explains its discovery and excavation. Amazing to think this place was found under what was already quite an urban area – hence who knows what might lie as yet undiscovered beneath our feet elsewhere. The chambers are actually smaller than the photographs of them I’d seen make them appear, but this is mainly because there’s nothing in any of these photos to give an idea of scale. Nevertheless, they are still an astonishing sight. I was most taken by the remnant drill marks in one of the chambers and by the ceilings of two others which are painted with vivid red ochre spirals. Absolutely fascinating. The main chamber and the ‘Holy of Holies’, of course, are stunningly beautiful and fantastically symmetrical. I was struck by one small passing comment on the film commentary – apparently no evidence of soot was found anywhere inside, so how were the subterranean chambers lit during both construction and use?”

 

The Tarxien Temples

From 1915-1919 the nearby Tarxien Temples were also excavated by Temi Zammit. There are four temples here, similarly dating to c.3600-2500 BC, and they must have been utilised by a substantial sized Neolithic community. Once the temples fell out of use the site has evidence of later activity during the Bronze Age and Roman period, as well as during medieval times, after which the site was lost until its rediscovery in the twentieth century. Many important finds have been made here, particularly in terms of monumental sculptures. Spiral motifs can be found here similar to those of the ochre-etched spiral designs on the roof of the Hypogeum. I noted that many of the snail shells I came across on Malta had similar spiral markings decorating their whorled shells, and so I couldn’t help wondering if these motifs might have been inspired from such observations derived from the natural world surrounding these sites.

 

Tarxien is possibly the key site for archaeologists wishing to understand the Neolithic period on Malta, but it is not the most picturesque of Malta’s Neolithic sites. Hence, a visit to Mnajdra and Ħaġar Qim is essential. These two sites are located very close to one another on the coast, far from any modern urban encroachment. The two sites are now each covered by huge sail-like canopies which were built primarily to protect these important sites from the elements, but they also protect the visitor from the full force of the sun too, making it much more pleasant to wander round and explore at leisure. And I don’t think it detracts from an appreciation of the site’s natural setting because after all when the temples were first constructed they would have had their own stone-corbelled rooves, hence you do get some suggestion of them as enclosed spaces.

 

Mnajdra and Ħaġar Qim

The temples consist of a series of rooms with rounded interiors connected by passageways. The walls are made of large upright limestone blocks, and some areas are still paved. There are niches, benches and ‘altars.’ Several of these yellow limestone megalithic slabs are stippled with a pecked honeycomb-like decoration. And some of the stones might have been configured to certain celestial alignments, although many of these assertions have yet to be definitively explained or actually demonstrated. A lot of prehistoric archaeology is speculative due to the nature of there being no written records to help explain or corroborate the design and original function of such sites and how these factors changed, evolved or were adapted over time. Systems of knowledge at this time are largely a mystery to us as modern interpreters, all we have to work with are the sites themselves and the material finds discovered within them – such as fragments of pottery, sculptures, remnants of food and fire use, tools, etc. But looking at the spatiality of such sites and speculating as to how they related to the surrounding landscape as it may have been at the time of construction, as well as factors relating to the climate, possible population densities, and the like are all things to consider and ponder about. A very interesting paper on these elements by David Turnbull which appeared in the academic journal, Theory, Culture & Society, in 2002, titled: Performance and Narrative, Bodies and Movement in the Construction of Places and Objects, Spaces and Knowledges: The Case of the Maltese Megaliths is well worth a read in this regard.

 

Mnajdra and Ħaġar Qim

Further along the coast heading west, the Dingli Cliffs are a lovely spot to walk and see the sunset. Turning inland, however, there is another site of subterranean interest in the town of Rabat – St. Paul’s catacombs. These are the largest and said to be the most impressive of all Malta’s catacombs. Covering an area of over 2000m² the catacombs date back to the Phoenician period at the earliest, and to the period of Arab rule around 870 AD at the latest, but the heyday of the catacombs was during the Byzantine or Romano-Christian period, 4^th-8^th century AD. A flight of stone steps takes you down into a wide atrium-like area where you can see two large round ‘agape tables’ carved into the rock, these were designed and used for leaving food offerings to the dead. From this atrium a labyrinth of low and narrow passageways on multiple levels contain many different designs of tombs which have all been cut into the rock. Some of these types are named as follows: ‘loculus’, recessed graves or niches cut into the walls; ‘forma’, or graves cut into the floor; as well as arched recess graves, known as ‘arcosolium’; and ‘window graves’, which are more like small rooms; plus ‘table’ and ‘bench’ graves, which look like stone chests; and the more elaborate ‘baldacchino’ or canopied graves, which look like the stone tombs found in churches, except these are all carved from the natural rock of the catacomb. The whole place is rather reminiscent of the catacombs seen beneath the church in Venice in the film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; and like Indy, you can wander around in the almost pitch darkness exploring this sepulchral space – although here the graves are now empty of their ancient bones. When I went down into the catacomb there were hardly any other visitors, and so I wandered at leisure for quite a long time, exploring the length and breadth of the place – never quite sure of how far it would go or if I’d lose my way and not know how to get back to the entrance. But as I wandered, crossing and recrossing my own path, I began to forma a mental picture of the layout in my mind until I felt fairly confident I knew where I was and where certain passages would lead me. It was also a wonderful escape from the intense heat and the bright sunshine of the day outside.

 

St. Paul's Catacombs

Chronologically, the last or most recent of subterranean sites of interest on Malta are the Lascaris War Rooms back in Valletta. These reminded me a little of the Cabinet War Rooms in London which I last visited when I was a child. The Lascaris War Rooms were built to serve a similar purpose too. This was the place where General Eisenhower oversaw the operations of the Allied Forces based in the Mediterranean during the latter part of World War 2, including the invasion of Sicily (which I think my grandfather might have been a part of; he certainly served in Italy later on). A forlorn and somewhat moth-eaten crowd of manikins populate the old bunk room dormitories, the map rooms and radio stations here, lending the place a spooky and surreal aspect as though it were designed to bemuse and befuddle John Steed in an episode of 1960s TV drama, The Avengers. The underground HQ was known to the troops it housed as ‘The Hole’, but it was really named after the knight, Jean Paul de Lascaris Castellar, because the tunnels were originally dug by the knights as living quarters for their galley slaves. After the War these rather dank and musty old tunnels were extended even further, although the works were abandoned before they were completed with much of the excavation equipment simply left behind, hence no one now really knows what the intended purpose for this was, but, had it been finished, it would have been a huge military warren hidden beneath the ancient streets far above.

 

Lascaris War Rooms

Malta is certainly steeped in history. It’s hard to set foot anywhere on Malta without some historical feature from the near or remote past catching your eye. And for the solo traveller it is a wonderfully accessible and easily navigable place to get around. I managed to fill a week with plenty of historical sites, churches and museums – and there were still places I didn’t manage to get to see on Malta, let alone Gozo. It’s definitely a place which I can’t imagine I’d ever get bored of exploring. I’d long wanted to come here, and so, sitting at the airport, waiting to board my flight home, I reflected on the fact that I could now draw a red pencil line through it on my own personal wish list of places to see and visit in my lifetime. It is a place which will linger long in my memory. Maybe one day I will return, but for now – for this history buff, it was the perfect place to have celebrated the personal milestone of achieving my MA in history.

 

 

See more photographs from my trip to Malta here

 

 

References

L. H. Dudley Buxton, Malta: An Anthropogeographical Study, in Geographical Review, Vol. 14, No. 1 (January, 1924), pp. 75-87

Keith Sciberras & David M. Stone, Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood, and Malta (Valetta, Malta: Midsea Books Ltd., 2006)

David Turnbull, Performance and Narrative, Bodies and Movement in the Construction of Places and Objects, Spaces and Knowledges: The Case of the Maltese Megaliths, in Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 19, No. 5/6 (2002), pp. 125-143

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The Old Bridge at Mostar

 

Crossing international borders always has a funny feel to it, for me, at least. I’m not sure why. I know borders are simply manmade concepts. Arbitrary lines on maps that only apply to human beings. Animals, plants, breezes, sunshine, rain, rivers, oceans don’t seem to pay them any heed at all. But to people they can and often do mean and make a world of difference. Crossing international borders by air or by sea, arguably, feels somewhat more normal than crossing land boundaries. There’s something solid about making such a transition, passing through another element to get to your destination. Crossing the ether, or crossing the water, really does feel like a making a leap from one place to another. Land borders on the other hand – to me at any rate – have always felt somewhat more fuzzy, and sometimes far more sinister and forbidding.

 

I guess it has something to do with the checkpoints, with their barbed wire fences, their red and white swing-arm barriers, their uniforms, their guns, etc. Being asked to surrender your passport, especially when it is physically taken away from you and disappears somewhere out of sight in response to the ‘requirements’ of unseen checks and procedures. Similarly, hearing the loud clunk of the stamp being hammered into your passport when you have been cleared and approved is the quintessential sound of your arrival. It’s a very definite sound, it’s the sign that you can proceed, you can step over that invisible line, cross that threshold, pass through the boundary from ‘here’ to ‘there.’ Affirmative. You may proceed. Welcome to wherever you are.

 

I was quite young when I made my first land border crossing. It was on a trip to Amsterdam. We’d crossed the Channel by hovercraft – an oddly antiquated-yet-futuristic (and very sea-sickening) means of transport at the time, but now utterly defunct. We then travelled onwards by coach through France and Belgium to Holland. It was pre-Schengen era, so we stopped at each border and a very severe-no-nonsense-looking policeman boarded the coach and walked down the centre aisle. He collected up everyone’s passport and then exited the bus for a while. We all had to sit there and wait. It all felt very John Le Carré. The policeman later got back on-board, now accompanied by a fellow officer, and asked two young men sitting at the back of the bus, two British servicemen travelling in uniform (RAF, I think), to get off the bus for “further checks.” They eventually came back looking rather disgruntled and murmured that it was something which “happened every time.”

 

A local lad describing the daring tradition of bridge diving

As I was then still only a kid, seeing the heavy handguns hanging from these border policemen’s belts impressed me greatly. Back then, in the UK, you didn’t see many armed policemen. But something I recall equally vividly was looking out of the coach window when we were allowed to resume our journey. The bus motoring on, I keenly scrutinised the scenery as it began to slip past the window, trying to see what was different on this side of the border compared to the side we’d just left behind. In truth, I couldn’t see much of a difference at all. It all looked very boringly the same to me. It had been raining in France, and it was still raining here in Belgium.

 

That trip, and that very thought, came back to me many years later whilst I was on another overland trip. This time I was travelling from France to Spain; we crossed the border in the high Pyrenees mountains. There was no stopping for any border checkpoint due to Schengen. The only thing which told me we’d crossed the border from one country into another was a sign on the side of the road, but I noticed something far more distinctly, and that was a dramatic change in the style of the buildings. They were suddenly shaped very differently; their style and colour of roofing material was completely different too. Street signs looked different; different colours, different fonts, different sounding words, place names, different ideograms. Removing borders doesn’t always remove differences. There are satellite photos of Berlin taken at night which still, thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, distinctly show the area which used to be known as ‘West Berlin’ because the street lights there still use a different sort of lightbulb, which means the street lighting is a different colour to the rest of the city.

 

I’ve crossed other land borders, from the UK into France (via the Channel Tunnel); from France into Switzerland; from the USA into Canada; but there was something different about crossing the land border from Croatia into Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2016. I suppose in some ways it was akin to when I crossed over from West Germany into East Germany, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The civil war in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s was now some 25 years ago. Both of these newly independent states were once part of that defunct Federation, but only Croatia has since joined the EU. Schengen doesn’t apply here. And so, our passports needed to be collected up and handed over. This time, thankfully though, it wasn’t an armed policeman eyeing us all suspiciously, but rather it was our tour guide, cheerily apologising for the inconvenience.

 

The border here is a bit strange, because there is a short stretch of coast which is Bosnia-Herzegovina and which cuts through the longer coastline of Croatia – hence a deal has been struck on certain stretches of the coast road to allow Croatians (and their visiting tourists) to get from one part of their country to the other without the need for passport checks. Here though we tourists were crossing the border proper and turning right, heading away from the sea, motoring inland for the day to visit the town of Mostar. Our tour guide shuffled back down the aisle, returning our passports. Opening them, we were each slightly disappointed to find we hadn’t acquired a stamp that read “Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Despite the border checkpoint, us day-trippers are exempt – on the condition that we leave by the same point of entry before the end of the day. It might feel like a merely arbitrary line on a map, but the point is that it’s a line which is a closely monitored one.

 

As we motored on, I looked out of the window and I remembered once again those border crossing thoughts I first had as a kid on my way to Amsterdam, and then once again many years later when I crossed over from France into Spain, because here too I can see a distinct difference. The houses are different, the roads look different, and, because we are heading inland, the scenery begins to look a little different too. There are genuine cultural differences here though. Bosnia-Herzegovina is a largely Muslim country (whereas Croatia is predominantly Christian). Orthodox and Catholic Christians form the next sizable religious group. And, like several other formerly Ottoman controlled Balkan states, its population is ethnically diverse – predominantly home to Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. Relationships between these different groups historically has been fraught, especially in the wake of the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, hence the bloody civil war which was fought here until 1996. In many respects the town of Mostar is a symbol of that mix and those tensions.

 

Mostar was symbolic before the Bosnian war, as a town divided between Muslims and Christians, and a town divided by a river, but with both sides united by a remarkable bridge of stunning architectural grace and beauty. It took nine years to build and was completed sometime around 1566-1567. Commissioned by the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, it was intended to be a more durable replacement for a wooden suspension bridge. The building works were overseen by a man named Mimar Hayruddin or Mimar Hajrudin. Some stories state that Hajrudin was commissioned under pain of death should the bridge fail, and that he ran away on the day that the scaffolding was removed, such was his fear that the bridge would not hold. But it did hold – and in fact it stood for more than 400 years; until on the 9^th November 1993 it was deliberately destroyed by the Christian Bosnian-Croat artillery who were perched on the high ground of the steep hill overlooking the town.

 

The hill from which the Old Bridge was destroyed by artillery fire in 1993

The smaller Ottoman bridge at Mostar

Hajrudin’s achievement was an unparalleled feat of engineering at the time. Some 30 metres in length and its soffit around 20 metres in height from the beautiful turquoise waters of the River Neretva below, it was then the largest single span stone arch which had ever been constructed. A smaller bridge of the same design can be found close by to the main bridge at Mostar, which some people believe was constructed in order to test out the practical application of the theory behind this type of bridge construction technique – an architectural form which was subsequently used in other extant bridges in various parts of the Ottoman Empire (see here). As is often the way, when such things of great age and beauty are destroyed, that destruction enables us to better understand the mysteries as to how exactly they were built – much like the monumental stone Buddha statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 (see here). But, unlike the Bamiyan Buddhas, the “Old Bridge” (Stari Most) at Mostar has been rebuilt.

 

Its destruction was a highly symbolic act, hence so too was its reconstruction. At the time there was no military tactical or defensive reason for destroying the bridge, other than to symbolically break that cross-cultural unity which the bridge itself represented. Rebuilding it was seen as more than just a physical reconstruction project. To reinstate the bridge as accurately as it had been before was widely seen to be a matter of the utmost importance. Consequently, an international cooperative effort was mobilised to make it happen, with several countries – including Italy, Turkey, Hungary, the Netherlands, as well as the Croatian and Bosnian governments – contributing funds, equipment, expertise and manpower to the project. As many of the original stones as possible were recovered and reused from the riverbed. And a lot was learned in the process, particularly regarding the three types of stone (soft local Tenelija limestone, harder Dolomite limestone, and local Breca, a porous conglomerate) which were utilised for their differing properties, as well as the metallurgical materials and methods, using iron swallow-tailed clamps, pins and molten lead, which were used to brace, hold and lock the stonework firmly into place, plus the unique type of mortar which was used to cement the masonry – an unusual pink coloured mortar which was thought to have been the main reason why the river ran red like the Old Bridge itself was bleeding once it had been felled.

 

Some of the original stones from the Old Bridge which were not reused

It took three years to rebuild the Old Bridge, re-opening some eleven years after its destruction in 2004. The timeless elegance of that perfectly circular arch which had previously withstood four centuries, unchanging while various rulers came a went, from the Ottomans to the collapse of the Communist Eastern Bloc, really does appear to have defied the passage of time; especially now, having arisen once more like a phoenix from the ashes of a bitterly divisive civil war. Photographs of the bridge before and after the recent conflict look almost indistinguishable. And rather poignantly, a rooftop nearby in the heart of the old town overlooking the riverbank is painted with large letters which read: “Don’t forget, but do forgive forever.”

 

Mostar is a very beautiful town. There are many things to see here besides the famous Old Bridge and its smaller, and more secluded identical-twin which escaped the recent war unscathed – there are mosques, churches, caves, old cobbled streets and little craft shops, restaurants and cafes. To see Mostar now it is hard to believe such terrible things could have happened here so recently. But crossing such a bridge is a reminder that boundaries are all around us – not just the borders which separate nation from nation, nor the ideas and beliefs which separate cultures and religions, but the phases of peace and war, of one political form of governance from its predecessor and its successor, for these are both the seen and unseen boundaries by which we measure the stretches of time which mark off in our collective social conscious. It’s such boundaries, both temporal and geographical, which demarcate our lives and the lives of those who have gone before us. But how we choose to cross those boundaries and connect the two sides of these cognitive or imaginary divides is what shapes our worlds as well as the futures which we bequeath to those who come after us.

 

On some levels, maintaining borders and boundaries may well be a necessary fact of life, but surely acknowledging such borders and boundaries whilst also facilitating and enabling safe and easy passage, mending broken bridges, and allowing everyone to cross them without bias or favour, without fear or discrimination, is by far a better means of healing such divides and rifts. Unity and diversity needn’t be mutually exclusive – because, like the Old Bridge at Mostar, they are the twinned opposites which join together the two ends of a perfect circle. Boundaries and borders are, in fact, the places where we meet, cross over, merge, and return.

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