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Fieldnotes
| The hotel entrance is directly opposite the bus terminus in Bugibba - cross the road, avoiding the timeshare touts, and head for the tennis courts. From the hotel lobby, head to the rear left (coffee bar) and take the first door to the outside. Go to your right - and the temple is half surrounded by a 1970s accommodation block for the hotel. An information board proclaims: Bugibba Temple, which is preserved in the grounds of the hotel, belongs to the same category of prehistoric monuments as Tarxien and Hagar Qim in Malta, and Ggantija in Gozo. These imposing sanctuaries, erected for the worship of a deity which has so far defied a generally acceptable definition, constitute the oustanding achievement of the Maltese Copper Age, its Megalithic architecture. Their development lasted more than a thousand years and spanned almost the whole of the third millennium before Christ. The features which have survived here are the main entrance roofed over by a single block of stone weighing several tons, some of the upright blocks forming the left front wall, the semi-circular chamber inside the entrance to the left and a thick rubble wall the incongriguity of which speaks for its Bronze Age date when the temple had long fallen into disuse. Two exceptional blocks, now to be seen at the National Museum of Archaeology in Vallette were decorated with relief carvings of spirals, and aptly enough for a temple so near the coast, stylised fishes. "preserved" - not sure that's the word I would choose. Random wiring, half destroyed and totally unsafe no doubt, for nocturnal illuminations, fastened to the bottom of the megaliths, and general detritus from hotel guests hiding under boulders .... at least the carvings have been removed and saved. This post appears as part of the weblog entry Malta part 3 – urban sites
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Posted by sals28th January 2008ce Edited 28th January 2008ce
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