Maurice Caruana Curran : guardian of heritage and justice

The cycle of frescoes of Mal Millieri constitutes a unique treasure-house of inestimable value in Malta's cultural heritage. Along with Din l-Art Helwa, the association founded and presided over by him for more than thirty years, Maurice Caruana Curran played a crucial role in the discovery and preservation of this treasure. His role in the discovery and initial measures for the restoration and valorisation of the Annunciation church and its frescoes are dealt with in other contributions in this volume. Because of word limit constraints, I shall also refrain from going into much detail about the excavation which was conducted by Tom Blagg, Anthony Luttrell and myself in the spring of 1977, the conclusion of which might, or might not, have contributed to the change of the state of health of the frescoes. My contribution will dwell on that episode in the history of Din l-Art Helwa's guardianship of the Annunciation Church of Mal Millieri concerning the urgent measures that needed to be taken to preserve this cycle of paintings after a serious alarm was raised on their deterioration. The solutions that were presented to the Association and the solutions it selected reflect the important and fundamental shift that took place at that time concerning the methodology of preservation of fresco painting from one of 'restoration' (including radical intervention) to the current one of 'conservation' (based on minimal intervention and reversibility).peer-reviewe

The tradition of an ancient Greek colony in Malta

The persistent tradition of a Greek colonization of the Maltese Islands in ancient times was inspired mainly by ancient literary allusions. These are basically 1) the identification of the Homeric island of Ogygia, Calypso's refuge, with Malta; 2) the reference in the Greek poet Lycophron to the settlement in Malta of a group of Greek warriors on their return home from the Trojan war; 3) the ties of friendship between the Maltese and Phalaris, the Greek tyrant of Agrigento, revealed in three of a group of letters attributed to him; 4) the mythical reign of a king of Malta, named Battus, homonymous of another Greek king historically associated with the foundation of the Greek colony of Cyrene in North Africa; 5) Thucydides' inclusion of 'the small islands' with that part of Sicily which, after an alleged Phoenician domination, was colonized by the Greeks. This theory appeared to receive confirmation from numerous archaeological objects found in these islands which showed Greek characteristics or bore inscriptions in the Greek language.peer-reviewe

Contextual significance of ritual evidence in Malta

Archaeology has not yet provided us with the proper tools and the right means for reading the minds of our prehistoric ancestors from the material evidence they left us. When and if such means are ever made available, we may rest assured they will be the product of science and technology rather than of archaeology itself. TiII then such a scenario is bound to remain in the realm of wishful thinking and science fiction. With our feet planted firmly in the ground the most we can hope to do, in the meantime, in the field of religious thought, is to try to reconstruct, by using that same material evidence. the rituals through which our ancestors might have expressed their beliefs in the supernatural.peer-reviewe

An Egyptianizing relief from Malta

From the very first announcement of the theme of this congress it was evident that the "Egyptianizing" phenomenon would be one of the most recurring topics in the diverse contributions, especially those concerned with cultural aspects, such as art and religion, outside Egypt itself. It would be presumptuous of me, therefore, and futile, even to try to define the phenomenon. At this stage I would only wish to emphasize the distinction between a) the more ancient version of the "Egyptianizing" movement, which was diffused throughout the central and western Mediterranean by the Phoenicians, who not only plagiarized indiscriminately Egyptian art and iconography for their commercial purposes, but made extensive use of Egyptian religious form and content to give some sort of shape to their own religion; and b) the later Hellenistic version, which spread throughout the Graeco-Roman world as a result of the incorporation of Egypt, with its rich cultural and artistic baggage, within the Hellenistic world after the conquest of Alexander. The first movement started practically with the onset of the Iron Age which in the Near East coincided with the arrival on the scene of the Sea Peoples, one of the consequences of which was the emergence of the Phoenicians as a geopolitical reality. The Phoenicians foraged their way through the immense artistic and iconographic heritage of this ancient civilization and made it their own, often changing radically, if not completely, its original meaning. This Egyptianizing movement is also attested in Malta. It was introduced there by the Phoenicians who started their colonization of the islands towards the end of the 8th century and retained their presence in them till the second Punic war, Carthage having in the meantime shifted their political centre of gravity towards her. The physical products of this cultural movement in the Maltese islands have been catalogued and studied in Halbl's corpus of Aegyptiaca (1989). The second, or Hellenistic, Egyptianizing movement saw the diffusion, first of Egyptian artistic iconography, and later also of religious cults, throughout the GraecoRoman world in the process of the formation of that complex, but unified, cultural and artistic koine that characterizes the Hellenistic phenomenon. This immensely rich cultural baggage was taken over, practically wholly, by the Roman empire. With the incorporation of Egypt within the Roman commonwealth, the last of the Hellenistic kingdoms to do so, the Egyptianizing movement in the Roman world intensified even further as an artistic fashion, and introduced the diffusion of Egyptian religious cults in all parts ofthe Empire. In spite of Augustus' initial opposition to Egyptian cults in Rome, temples dedicated to Isis and Serapis proliferated, leading to the abrogation of his prohibiting edict. Egyptian cults were thus practised at all social levels (Lambrechts 1956, pp. 2, 34). This second movement did not leave the Maltese islands untouched and Halbl's corpus of Aegyptiaca includes a number of Egyptian items of this period (Halbl 1989, pp. 160-167). The purpose of this paper is to examine a relief fragment which is classifiable under this second Egyptianizing movement, and to investigate what light it sheds on the "Egyptian presence" in Malta, whether it was the product of a purely artistic fashion, the "Egyptomania" that invaded Rome and Italy in the first century A.D., or a manifestation of a religious worship.peer-reviewe

Excavations at Tas-Silg, 1996

For the first time ever, the Department of Classics and Archaeology of the University of Malta conducted its own excavations at the site of Tas-Silg which is located at Marsaxlokk in the south-east of the island of Malta. These excavations were directed by the authors, who would like to thank Mr Simon Mason and Mr Nicholas Vella who were responsible for the field supervision. We would also like to thank the area supervisors, namely Mr Andrew Appleyard, Ms Carmen Michelle 'Buhagiar, Ms Aloisia de Trafford, Mr Joseph Magro Conti, Mr Paul C. Saliba as well as Mr Andre Corrado; the latter agreed to act as an area supervisor for a while when the need arose. Obviously, we do also appreciate very much all the hard work of the "diggers" who were in fact students from.the aforementioned Department of Classics and Archaeology, the foreign and local students who formed part of the first Summer School in Archaeology which was organized by the International Office of the University of Malta, and some very eager and hard-working volunteers.peer-reviewe

Cyrenaican funerary portraits in Malta

The Museum Department of Malta possesses among its rich collection of antiquities, both local and foreign, a set of six portraits which should be appended to the remarkable series of Cyrenaican funerary busts studied and published by Miss Elizabeth Rosenbaum. Four of these busts (I–IV) are exhibited among the sculptures in the ‘Roman Villa’ Museum at Rabat and the other two (V and VI) are stored in the basement of the National Museum in Valletta. It is not in the least surprising that Miss Rosenbaum omitted these busts in her otherwise most comprehensive catalogue of Cyrenaican portraits, which included those scattered in various European collections. The reason for this omission is that these sculptures have either been classified incorrectly or never published. The first to publish four of these portraits (I–IV) was Thomas Ashby, who gave only a short description of them without attempting a typological classification; he even called one ‘a little Phoenician in character’ and another ‘rather Etruscan-looking’. Shortly after, T. Zammit repeated, almost verbatim, Ashby's captions for I, II and IV, while omitting III.peer-reviewe