A Monumental Mandate

Archeology is the publication of the Archeological Institute of America. A recent edition featured an article about Malta by Mark Rose with photographs by Andrew Lowell Slayman. From Archeology:

The paradox of the Maltese archipelago--five islands lying in the Mediterranean 60 miles south of Sicily--is how so much cultural heritage came to be packed into such a small area. This nation's vast heritage has been recognized for centuries. En route to Egypt at the behest of King Louis XVI of France, Charles Sonninni stopped at the islands in 1777 and made the following observation, "Before the island of Malta became the domain of the Brotherhood of St. John of Jerusalem, it had passed successively into the hands of several potentates. From the Carthaginians down to the Arabs it underwent a frequent change of masters; the vestiges of antiquity in it are accordingly not few." Sonnini wrote also that he saw in a library "a petrified bone of great size," which he took to be from a quadruped. When Napoleon's fleet ousted the Knights of St. John in 1798...