AFRICA, MALTA, ETC. 



plan, are excavated in the soft limestone and 

 arranged in two storeys connected by a staircase, 

 part of which still remains in place. The finest 

 rooms are in the upper storey. The largest is 

 circular, and contains in its walls a series of false 

 doors and windows. It is in this room that the 

 remarkable nature of the work in the hypogeum is 

 most apparent. On entering it one sees at once 

 that the intention of the original excavator was 

 to produce in solid rock underground a copy of a 

 megalithic structure above ground. Thus the 

 walls curve slightly inwards towards the top as 

 do those of the apses of Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim, 

 and the ceiling is cut to represent a roof of great 

 blocks laid across from wall to wall with a space 

 left open in the centre where the width would be 

 too great for the length of the stones. The treat- 

 ment of the doors and windows recalls at once that 

 of the temples above ground. The mason was 

 not content, when he needed a door, to cut a 

 rectangular opening in the rock ; he must repre- 

 sent in high relief the monolithic side-posts and 

 lintel which were the great features of the mega- 

 lithic ' temples ' of Malta. Nor has he failed in 

 his intention, for, as one moves from room to 

 room in the hypogeum, one certainly has the 

 feeling of being in a building constructed of 

 separate blocks and not merely cut in the solid 

 rock. No description can do justice to the grace 

 of the curves and the flow of the line in the circular 



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