Tarxien Temples: Spiral Carvings of Prehistoric Malta

The Tarxien Temples are a group of megalithic (large-stone) temples in the town of Tarxien, a few kilometres south-east of Valletta in Malta. Built and used mostly between about 3150 and 2500 BC, they contain the finest carved decoration of Malta’s temple culture, including spiral reliefs, animal friezes and part of a giant human statue. Tarxien also marks the final flowering of a temple tradition that ended abruptly around 2500 BC.

Background: Malta’s temple builders

Malta and Gozo were settled by farmers from Sicily around 5900 BC. Over the following millennia their descendants developed a culture found nowhere else: from about 3600 BC they built stone temples with lobed rooms, called apses, opening off a central passage. Sites such as Ġgantija on Gozo, Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra are among the oldest free-standing stone monuments in the world.

Archaeologists divide Maltese prehistory into phases named after key sites. The last phase of the temple period is named after Tarxien itself and is conventionally dated c. 3150–2500 BC. Recent radiocarbon work, including the European research project FRAGSUS, suggests the phase may be a little later, roughly 2900–2350 BC, so all dates should be read as approximate.

Discovery and excavation

In 1913 farmers working the fields at Tarxien kept striking large stone blocks and reported them to the authorities. Themistocles Zammit, director of the Malta Museum, began systematic excavation in 1915 and continued until 1919. For its time his work was careful: he recorded the layers of soil and noticed that a later cemetery lay above the temple floors.

Zammit’s finds made Tarxien the best-known prehistoric site in Malta. Many of the original carved stones were later moved to the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta to protect them from weathering, and replicas now stand in their places at the site.

The temple complex

Tarxien is not one building but a cluster of four megalithic structures, linked together over several centuries:

• The earliest structure, a small, much-ruined building to the east, which dates from before the Tarxien phase.
• The South Temple, which held the richest carved decoration and the giant statue.
• The Central Temple, unusual for its six apses arranged in three pairs, reached through the South Temple.
• The East Temple, built with fine, carefully dressed stone slabs.

The temples were built of local Globigerina limestone, a soft stone that is easy to carve but erodes quickly. Their walls once probably supported roofs, perhaps of timber or partial corbelled stone, though how they were roofed is still debated. Large stone balls found nearby may have been used as rollers to move the heavy blocks.

Spirals, animals and the giant statue

Tarxien is famous above all for its decoration. Altar blocks and screen slabs carry raised spiral patterns, some in running pairs that resemble eyes or tendrils. Pitted decoration, made by drilling rows of small holes, covers other stones.

Friezes in the temples show animals in low relief: one with goats or sheep, a pig and a ram, another with a bull and a sow suckling piglets. These are among the earliest known animal reliefs in Europe and reflect the farming economy of the islanders.

In one altar Zammit found a hidden niche containing a flint knife and animal bones, which suggests animal sacrifice formed part of the rituals. Near the entrance of the South Temple stands the lower part of a colossal female or sexless figure. Only the skirt, the stout legs and small feet survive. Estimates for its original height range from about 2.5 to 3 metres, which would make it one of the largest prehistoric statues in the Mediterranean. The original is in the national museum in Valletta.

The end of the temple period

Around 2500 BC temple building in Malta stopped, and the temple culture disappeared within a short time. Historians and archaeologists still debate why. Proposed explanations include:

• Environmental stress: drought, deforestation and soil erosion on small islands with limited farmland.
• Population decline: FRAGSUS research found signs of a sharp fall in population near the end of the period.
• New arrivals: Bronze Age newcomers with different burial customs, pottery and metal tools appear soon after.

There is no firm evidence for a violent conquest, and the change may have combined several causes. What is clear is that Tarxien’s builders had no direct successors in temple architecture.

The Bronze Age cemetery

After a gap, people of the Tarxien Cemetery phase (c. 2400–1500 BC) reused the ruined South Temple as a burial ground. Unlike the temple builders, they cremated their dead and placed the ashes in pottery urns, with small objects such as copper axes and daggers. Zammit’s discovery of this layer above the temple floors was important evidence that the temples were older than the Bronze Age, at a time when many scholars believed they were much younger.

Timeline

• c. 5900 BC: First farming settlers reach Malta from Sicily.
• c. 3600–3200 BC: The earliest, small structure at Tarxien is built during the Ġgantija phase.
• c. 3150–2500 BC: The South, Central and East temples are built and used (Tarxien phase).
• c. 2500 BC: Temple building ends across Malta.
• c. 2400–1500 BC: The ruins are reused as a Bronze Age cremation cemetery.
• 1913: Farmers report large stone blocks in a field at Tarxien.
• 1915–1919: Themistocles Zammit excavates the complex.
• 1992: Tarxien is added to the Megalithic Temples of Malta World Heritage Site.
• 2015: A protective canopy is completed over the remains.

Why it matters

The Tarxien Temples show Malta’s prehistoric temple culture at its most artistically ambitious, just before it vanished. Their spirals, animal friezes and giant statue reveal a society able to organise large building projects and rich rituals at the same time as, or earlier than, the pyramids of Giza. The underground Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, only a few hundred metres away, belongs to the same world. Together they make Malta one of the key places for understanding Neolithic Europe.