MALTA TEMPLES
of REBIRTH from the

AGE of Taurus:

AGE of Aries

 Marija Gimutas
& the orthodox archaeologists

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"Marija Gimbutas has not only prepared a fundamental glossary of pictorial keys to the mythology of the otherwise undocumented era of European prehistory, but has established the main themes of a religion in veneration of both the universe as a living body of Goddess-Mother Creatrix and all the living things within it as partaking in her divinity." --Joseph Campbell

Spiral motifs can be seen in all the temples. This represents the cycle of life, death and rebirth ever evolving in a continuation of life after death or  eternity. Similar spirals have bee n found at Knossos, Crete and Newgrange, Ireland 
"Although it is considered improper in mainstream or orthodox archaeology to interpret the ideology of prehistoric societies, it became obvious to Marija that every aspect of Old European life expressed a sophisticated religious symbolism. She, therefore, devoted herself to an exhaustive study of Neolithic images and symbols to discover their social and mythological significance. To accomplish this it was necessary to widen the scope of descriptive archaeology to include linguistics, mythology, comparative religions and the study of historical records. She called this interdisciplinary approach archaeomythology."
Anthropologist Ashley Montagu has called her findings as important as the excavation of Troy, output to the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Anthropologist Ashley Montagu

  • "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof."
  • "The natural superiority of women is a biological fact, and a socially acknowledged reality."
  • "The idea is to die young as late as possible."

 

One of the century's finest anthropologists,
Ashley Montagu (1905 - 1999),

bird
Birds in flight from pottery found at Ggantija Temples

GODDESS WORSHIP
in
PREHISTORY

Marija
Gimbutas
overcomes the
Orthodox

ARCHAEOLOGIES

2003 Orthodox Archeologists in Malta agree on more study:
"If red ochre symbolized blood, was it that of battle or menstruation (gender studies again), or more generally of life, or purely cosmetic, without further meaning at all?  Spirals can have one of innumerable meanings, or be purely decorative." 

"A discrepancy is becoming apparent between the accepted chronologies of Sicily (Terranova, Cultraro, Bruno) and Malta (Trump)."


"All were agreed that we need more evidence. Particularly bewailed was the dearth, or near-absence, of settlement sites contemporary with the temples in Malta."


Summing Up, and the Way Forward.
Dr. David Trump concluding remarks

 
Malta, Prehistory and Temples
 2003 Archeological Conference in Malta
1985 Conference

All the Fat-Ladies” statuettes in the Valetta Museum are headless, so the question arises if the heads were made from some other material.
Dr. Trump has revised this criticized term to "obese figures," pointing out that you cannot be certain they are female.
This theory (goddess worship) is rejected by most archaeologists and anthropologists as an explanation of early European religious life:

"In late nineteenth century opinions on comparative religion, in a line of thinking that begins with Friedrich Engels and J. J. Bachofen, and which received major literary promotion in The Golden Bough by Sir James G. Frazer, it was believed that worship of a sky father was characteristic of nomadic peoples, and that worship of an earth mother similarly characterized farming peoples. According to this body of doctrine, nomads militarily overran farming societies, and replaced goddesses with male gods. During the process, it was believed that the invaders devalued the status of women and replaced a matriarchy with a patriarchy. The religious changes were imagined to reflect this change in the status of the sexes. This belief system was linked to the discovery of the Indo-European languages, and it was fancied that the military conquest underlying this model spread those languages. The sky father was held to be an Indo-European invention. This is the Aryan myth, the belief that European history was shaped by a conquering Aryan race. Aryan and Indo-European were synonymous during this period."

"I prefer to call her the Giantess and not label her as huge and fat as the previous archaeologists have done. In one glance, many of the young women suggested that perhaps the giantess was strong, like the mythic Amazons. More effective and sacred than words, the giantess triggers ancient memories within the modern daughter."
Marija Gimbutas

LINKS
National Museum of Archeology in Vallleta
Ggantija by World Heritage unesco
heritagemalta.org
heritagemalta.org/ggantija  ||
contact
Ggantija by megalithic.co.uk/
FOTOS

Pan Photo

Ggantija Fotos by megalithic.co.uk 

 Overview and floor plan ||Fotos by goeurope.about.com

Fotos by blah.ru/

Fotos by Maltacenter.com

BOOK LISTS

Goddess Tours Suggested Reading

The Maltese Goddess || bibliography  mystery by Lyn Hamilton

 

3600  BC Ggantija Temples on GOZO
millennium before the pyRamids or stonehenge

Prehistory is our history before the written word. Those who pursue its knowledge are often self-taught, since it has not been recognized as a course of study in most academic circles.

Academics are generally comfortable with beginning humankind's history around 3000 BC, when the Sumerian civilization along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in today's Iraq invented an alphabet and made great strides as a civilization. Yet humankind left its mark for future generations many millennium before this in the form of assorted symbols. Despite this, academics (including most archeologists) persist in doubting or dismissing conclusions that might be drawn from the prolific symbols common in prehistory. This also solves the potential conflict with traditional religious history, which can be damaging to career advancement.

Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994)
The scholar whose ground-breaking work translating the symbols of the Neolithic peoples of prehistory continues  to influence new generations and reshape the world view of itself.


 She finished her career as a Professor of European Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Curator of Old World Archaeology at what is now the Fowler Museum of Cultural History

Occasionally, an academic takes exception to the norm, and they  usually find their audience elsewhere than the ivory tower. This is the case with the temples of Malta. These monuments communicate in the universal languages of mathematical measurements of stars and seasons, and their words are expressed in the universal picture language of dreams. It does not require extensive education to see the Malta artifacts as representations of Mother Earth, symbolizing rebirth in the cycle of life and death.

Documenting that these patterns could be found repeatedly elsewhere in old Europe and that they informed the existence of the first agricultural or Neolithic cultures was the life work of archeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921 - 1994).

Gimbutas' radical interpretations came under attack, but she did not believe it possible to understand Neolithic cultures without recognizing the significance of their spirituality. Gimbutas' believed that one the great events in prehistory was the creation of villages made possible by efficiency of growing crops, thereby relieving humans from the uncertainty and immediacy of being hunter-gatherers.

Marija Gimbutas' work in explaining the symbols the symbols of Old Europe fell on deaf ears at the infamous 1985 Malta Archaeological Conference, but resonated with thousands of people around the world.

An Florida organization (otsf.org) devoted to the preservation Malta's neolithic temples tells of a forthcoming IMAX movie which sees the archeological evidence as the door to "a new chapter in the story of human development using the ancient monuments still standing on Malta as a threshold to prehistory. "

The Ggantija Temples

The Ggantija Temples are thought to be the oldest free-standing structures in the world. They are among the best-preserved temples on the Maltese Islands, andMnajdra are certainly the most visited historical site on the Maltese Islands.

The complex comprises two Neolithic temples dating from the third millennium BCE (3600 to 3000 BCE), and are situated on the northern side of the hilly plateau known as ix-Xaghra in Gozo. The temples are made up of two separate units enclosed by a wall and sharing a common facade. Some Goddess tours refer to them as the the Mother & Daughter Temple.

The ruins had been noted since 1772 and the remains were 'cleared' (not excavated) in 1827 under Colonel Otto Bayer. A small amount of pottery, vases and statuettes are now displayed in the archaeology museums in Victoria and Valletta. 

Two years later, in 1829, a German artist by the name of Von Brockdorff painted a series of watercolors of the temple area. These pictures are very important as they show stones and reliefs that have since been destroyed.

All the Maltese temples were built without the benefit of metal tools, or the wheel. They are comprised of a mixture of coralline and globigerina limestone. The temples have a concave facade, with a platform outside for the worshippers. They laid large stones and then covered it with crushed earth (torba).

The south temple contains five apses and a middle passageway leading to the innermost trefoil section. It is the older of the two (dating as far back as 3600 BCE), as well as being the larger and better preserved. It contained elaborate furniture, and a variety of important features such as altars, relief carvings and libation holes. Some suggest the left apse in the second pair capstones might refer to a triple divinity or simply the intuitively understood fundamental known as the cycle of life; that is, life, death rebirth.

The Temple People disappeared abruptly and without a trace, around c. 2300 BCE, (give or take a few centuries) leaving future generations to speculate and hope
for additional discoveries to shed light and understanding on
this veiled period of our past.

The outer wall of limestone encircles both temples, rising to a height of 6 meters. Some blocks weight 50 tons and are among the largest used anywhere on Malta for temple building. The plan of the southern temple incorporates five large apsidal chambers, with the inner one to the left being the most striking for its area and height - 85 square meters within 6 meter high walls. These walls are slightly inclined inwards as if intended to form a vaulted roof. The rough walling of the temple interior was originally smoothed by an application of clay and coated with a thin layer of lime plaster.

"The construction of these buildings demonstrate a mastery of quarrying, stone working, building and engraving techniques and must be the work of a mature, confident culture. Like stone circles in the British Isles some appear to be concerned with the passage of the seasons as indicated by the position of the Sun. "
Archaeology and Prehistory of Malta

The north temple is considerably smaller, but with a more evolved plan in which the rear apse is replaced by a shallow niche.

Local legend says that a great giantess Sansuna, who lived on a diet of broad beans and water, constructed one of the temples in a single day carrying the megaliths on her head as she carried her baby under her arm.

After the disappearance of the temple people, the islands were repopulated by an entirely different race.

GETTING THERE: Termples Street, Xaghra,Gozo
Tel: 2155 3194 Fax: 2155 0107

 

Marija Gimutas: 1921 - 1994   Grandmother of a Movement

Gimbutas began the long, tedious process of deciphering the symbols engraved and painted on pre-lndo-European figurines, temples, stamps and other items. With her extensive knowledge of comparative religion, mythology, linguistics and folklore, she saw connections that most archeologists would not have been able to discern -- and made interpretations that no traditional academic would dare. The picture of Neolithic Europe Gimbutas developed was one of a civilization with organized cities, highly sophisticated art, a peaceful, egalitarian society, and religion that cantered around a female deity. These ideas were detailed in her last three books: Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: 6.500-3.500 B.C. Myths and Cult Images (1974), The Language of the Goddess (1989), and The Civilization of the Goddess (1991).|

stone age, prehistoric goddess, MaltaGimbutas's radical interpretations came under attack from the orthodox academic community. While Gimbutas was a thorough scholar with encyclopedic knowledge, she also, Marler notes, "had the perception and sensitivity of an artist and poet." These qualities enabled her to see the complex symbolism of Neolithic Europe as an expression of belief in the sacredness of the natural world.

In the '80s, Gimbutas's work began to capture the imagination of many feminists. "Their response was a revelation to me, a big surprise," Gimbutas later told Marler, "because to the last moment I was so involved in my work that I didn't realize how strong the feminist movement (was)."

 "No one can remember her exact words, but her message was one of unconditional love and timeless wisdom."
1985 Malta Conference

An Excerpt from the Interview:

Marler: Your work appeals to a very broad audience and even people who don't have an academic background often feel they have an intuitive sense of what you're saying.

Marija: The intuitive people are always the first to say that. Then eventually academia catches up, because these are the least intuitive. (laughter)

 "I was born in Lithuania when it was still fifty percent pagan. I had quite a lot of direct connections to the Goddesses. They were around me in my childhood.  
Interview with Marija Gimbutas at levity.com

I had to learn from scratch because there was nobody in the whole United States who was really knowledgeable about what was in Russia or the Soviet Union in prehistoric times. So they invited me to write a book on eastern European prehistory and I spent about fifteen years doing this. So that was my background of learning.

The Indo-European social structure is patriarchal, patrilineal and the psyche is warrior. Every God is also a warrior. The three main Indo-European Gods are the God of the Shining Sky, the God of the Underworld and the Thunder God. The female goddesses are just brides, wives or maidens without any power, without any creativity. They're just there, they're beauties, they're Venuses, like the dawn or sun maiden.

So the system from what existed in the matristic culture before the Indo-Europeans in Europe is totally different. I call it matristic, not matriarchal, because matriarchal always arouses ideas of dominance and is compared with the patriarchy. But it was a balanced society, it was not that women were really so powerful that they usurped everything that was masculine. www.levity.com/mavericks/gimbut.htm

 

 

The Language of the Goddess
by Marija Alseikaite Gimbutas
Download
“ Where did this Goddess go?” asks Marija Gimbutas, author of Gods And Goddesses Of Old Europe.
 “In Greece, Persia, the Middle East and India ancient myths of the Goddess were obliterated or rewritten, and creation myths recast Her as the enemy…She was made a consort of a more powerful God, an inferior part of a pantheon, and was finally edited out altogether.”
Download

From Gimbutas perspective,  it was not possible to understand Neolithic cultures without recognizing the significance of their spirituality.

 

Mission in Malta unaccomplished
Report by Anton Mifsud
at grahamhancock.com About a particular would-be archaeologist '“defending” orthodox archaeology from the “threat” of alternative ideas.

PreHistory Chronology:
3000 BC Spring Equinox and the number 7 in Ireland

ancientx.com

sacredsites.com/europe

Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Traditions of Europe

 
"These astronomical, mathematical, and engineering findings are mostly ignored by orthodox archaeologists because Maltese temple architecture is commonly assumed to have developed previous to and independent of any outside influence. D.H. Trump, a noted 'expert' on Malta (Malta: An Archaeological Guide), comments that, "That there is nothing looking remotely like one of these temples outside the Maltese islands, so we cannot use 'foreign influence' to explain them. The almost complete absence of imported pottery further strengthens the argument." more at sacredsites
"Bits and pieces ofDownload goddesses not quite dead cluster around the Mary Magdalene pictured in the Gospel of John as the woman who, lamenting the dead Christ, seeks him and finding him resurrected, rejoices."
Marjorie Malvern
Venus in Sackcloth
:
 
 
The 1985 Malta Conference: It was through this connection to feminism late in life that Gimbutas came to understand her work on a personal, spiritual level. In 1985, a group of feminist scholars accompanied her to an academic conference in Malta, joining her for tours of the ancient Goddess temples in off-hours.
Artist and writer Cristina Biaggi recalls a dramatic moment in the Hypogeum, a giant underground chamber where, it is believed, priestesses served as oracles and sought wisdom though dreams.

"We brought Marija into the center of our circle and she suddenly started speaking in this oracular voice, as though she were in a trance," BiaggiLast Supper of Christ by DaVinci says. "No one can remember her exact words, but her message was one of unconditional love and timeless wisdom. When she came out of it, she seemed a little startled. Some of us were crying. The next day," Biaggi recalls, "I menstruated - and I had been menopausal for a year!"

The joy Gimbutas's female colleagues experienced in the Hypogeum was mitigated, however, by the lack of respect for Gimbutas's work on the part of the male archeologists at the conference. Artist and author Patricia Reis, who drew many of the images in The Language of the Goddess, recalls, "They kept referring to the Goddess figurines as 'fat ladies,' and they treated Marija like an eccentric aunt who was wonderful and mystical but not to be taken too seriously. It was so painful to watch."

Biography by Marguerite Rigoglioso

bull_leaper.jpg

Unity casts its own shadow to "create" polarity, represented geometrically by the compass itself, and the Vesica Piscis, the almond opening through which all other numbers and shapes are born.
  ConstructingThe
Universe.com

 
       
 
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