The scale of Ggantija

Julian Cope's The Modern Antiquarian is based on his guidebook of the same name and his exploration of Europe, The Megalithic European. The site is a 'resource for news, information, images, folklore & weblinks on the ancient sites across the UK, Ireland and Europe'. This post discusses the Ggantija temples:

..When it comes to 'looking at rocks' my family and I have an unspoken agreement, they are happy to tolerate my obsession as long as it doesn't involve me dragging them around a bunch of sites or trying to convince them how wonderful these places are. So I had a choice to make, I knew I could get away with taking them to one prehistoric site on Gozo. The island has many prehistoric sites from standing stones to temples to Dolmens, so where would it be? Without a doubt it had to be Ggantija.

Ggantija is signposted and quite easy to find. Once you get to Xaghra just look for the large car park and you know you're there. When walking towards the temple it is worth looking at the surrounding walls. Not far inside of the main gate there are some large orthostats that have been interpreted as possibly another structure associated with the main temple. Another feature worth looking out for is The North Cave, which is a cave just at the top of the site. The cave has been interpreted as possibly starting out as a rock cut tomb which then became a rubbish pit for the temples.

As for Ggantija itself, the scale of the walls is overwhelming. Mr Cope is spot-on when he refers to the walls as Cyclopean. I just had to stop and take it all in. This structure is five and a half thousand years old and was build by people who had no knowledge of metal. These stones were cut, erected and had fallen long out of use long before any Egyptian had even considered building a pyramid..

..Ggantija is an extremely important site and is treated as such by the Goitans, it has had the full heritage treatment but is not over the top, this is no 'Stonehenge-site-in-cage' it is a site you can still interact with and come away feeling that you've had a personal experience. As temples go Ggantija is definitely a world class site and my second favourite temple of the islands.

Metageum: Exploring the Consciousness of the Megalithic Temple Builders, Caraffa Stores, Vittoriosa Waterfront, Birgu, 3rd - 11th November 2007