Malta: 8 Claims to Fame

Most of us know what little we know about Malta courtesy of the classic film noir The Maltese Falcon (1941). It was the debut film of director John Huston and the third of three films adapted from the 1930 novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. The story concerns the fight for possession of a fabulously decorated falcon statuette, tribute of the Knights of Malta (also called Hospitallers) that was en route to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain). The emperor had “rented” Malta to the Hospitallers for an annual fee of one Maltese falcon a year. Falconry, as we all know, has a long history as the sport of kings. That much of Hammett’s tale—the tribute, the bird, and the relationship of the inhabitants of Malta (actually Hospitallers rather than “Knight Templars,” as the title card calls them) to the king—is true to history. But as for the “Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels”—well, Hammett made that part up.

Who were the Hospitallers and how did they get to Malta? The order—now formally known as the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta—has, as its name suggests, a complicated history. It was founded in 11th-century Jerusalem as a hospital for the care of ailing pilgrims to the Holy Land. Jerusalem was captured in 1099 during the First Crusade, and the order was recognized by the pope 14 years later. From that point on, the Hospitallers began to flourish (as did their rivals the Knights Templar), acquiring land and accruing great wealth. The Hospitallers both cared for the sick and defended Jerusalem until 1187, when the Ayyubid sultan Saladin conquered Jerusalem. They were ultimately forced out of the region in 1291, when they settled on Cyprus, and then bought the island of Rhodes in 1309. From that vantage point they harassed Muslim merchants in the eastern Mediterranean until they were defeated and cast out by the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. That’s when Charles V offered them Malta in exchange for an annual falcon.

Malta and the Hospitallers also have a fascinating art historical connection with the immensely influential painter Caravaggio. The artist’s aunt Margarita was a wet nurse to the children of Francesco Sforza I and his wife, Costanza Colonna, marchesa di Caravaggio. Because the Sforza and Colonna families were among the most powerful families of Italy, Caravaggio was able to find safe passage when in May 1606 he fled Rome after killing a man in a duel. He traveled to Naples and then to Malta under Colonna protection. Scholars suggest that his journey to Malta was undertaken at the suggestion of Costanza Colonna and that he traveled under the protection of her son Fabrizio (himself a Hospitaller). He hoped to be accepted into the order and with that to receive pardon for his crime. So Caravaggio painted several works to persuade the senior Knights of St. John. They soon petitioned the pope, who granted permission. In lieu of cold cash to enter the order, Caravaggio embarked on his well-known Beheading of St. John. (The Beheading is still in St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Malta’s capital, Valletta.) Scarcely was the paint dry before Caravaggio wounded a more-senior fellow knight, was thrown in prison, and escaped the island. He was defrocked in effigy in the presence of his own painting and expelled from the order. Talk about trouble…

The Maltese language—or Malti (as the Maltese call it)—is unique among Semitic languages in that it is written in the Latin alphabet (with some modified letters, namely ż, ċ, ġ, ħ, and għ). It originated as a form of Sicilian Arabic (or Siculo-Arabic) that was spoken in Sicily and Malta from about the 9th century. That dialect seems to have died out in Sicily by 1300, though it remained a living language on Malta and diverged enough from Arabic to become the language now known as Maltese. Its grammar and syntax are basically Arabic, but only about a third of its vocabulary is Arabic, with Sicilian/Italian responsible for about half and the rest accounted for by English (also an official language) and French. It is actually more of an Arabic-Romance hybrid.

Discovered in 1902, Malta’s Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni (near the town of Paola) is a trilevel rock-cut chamber tomb that was in use from roughly 4000 BCE to about 2500 BCE. It is a major Neolithic site and provides a unique perspective into the ancient culture of Malta. One of its most remarkable features is that its walls and ceiling echo architectural elements usually found aboveground. Its top level consists of a large room with burial chambers radiating off the sides. Some of the walls of the middle level are decorated with red ochre. The lowest level, reached by means of seven steps, contained no bones and is thought to have been used for storage. The 32 rooms that make up the entire labyrinthine chamber cover about 5,170 square feet (480 square meters). In addition to the bones of some 7,000 individuals, investigators found decorated pottery, beads, obsidian and flint tools, stone pendants, and figurines. (For more about that, see 3 below.) The Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1980. If you plan to visit, get your tickets early. To protect the site, tours are now limited to 10 individuals at a time and 80 per day in an attempt to control the microclimate.

Excavations at Ħal Saflieni yielded one particularly intriguing find: the Sleeping Lady. The obese figure, measuring 12 centimeters (slightly more than 4½ inches) and now resting in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, was discovered in the middle level of the hypogeum. The meaning of this proto-Botero sculpture is shrouded in mystery. Like the Venus of Willendorf, she represents one of a continuum of such portable female figurines that have been found in a great variety of places. Like the many other figures of her type, the Sleeping Lady has provided scholars a great deal of food for thought. Whether she was a fertility figure, a representative of the mother goddess, or something else entirely, the presence of many such figures in various attitudes seems to indicate clearly that the female was an integral part of cult rituals. Much worth reading has been written about what have been called the death cults of Malta.

An incredible number of prehistoric temples are present on the islands of Gozo and Malta, some of which are described by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee as representing the oldest freestanding stone buildings in the world. They include Mnajdra, Ħaġar Qim, Skorba, Ta’ Ħaġrat, and Tarxien on Malta and Ġgantija on Gozo. Most of them are somewhat younger than the Hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni. Animal, but not human, bones have been found there (suggesting animal sacrifice) as well as mushroom-shaped altars and other proposed ritual furnishings. Notable among the discoveries are many female figurines. At Tarxien, for example, archaeologists found the lower portion—skirt and legs—of a large standing female figure, pictured by some as a “mother goddess.”

Still in the realm of stones and bones, Malta was the birthplace of archaeologist Frank Calvert, the true discoverer of the site of ancient Troy. At the time of Calvert’s birth, Malta had been a British protectorate for 28 years. As a boy living on an island rich with such prehistoric ruins as those named above, he became obsessed with antiquity. Even as a teen he traveled to ancient sites and learned as much as he could on his own, not only about ancient societies but about the nascent art of archaeology. When his brother Frederick purchased land in the Troas that included part of Hisarlık, Calvert began careful excavation there. In time he willingly shared his knowledge with Heinrich Schliemann, who had funding, and the rest of the story, carefully controlled by Schliemann, is history. Although full credit was claimed by Schliemann, recent scholarship has revealed Calvert’s huge role in the find. The whole sordid story is told in Susan Heuck Allen’s Finding the Walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik (1999).