Mnajdra: the South Temple

At dawn on the spring and autumn equinoxes the sun rises in line with the main doorway and its first light runs down the corridor to the stone at the far end. At midsummer the beam swings to catch the edge of the great slab left of the inner doorway, and at midwinter the one to the right. The precision has been measured; the intent is not in doubt. What the builders did with the knowledge is not recorded.

The walls are decorated with bands of small drilled holes, thousands of them, and the doorways are cut with a care the soft stone of Ħaġar Qim could not hold. Behind the main chambers are small rooms reached through holes in the wall and screened by slabs. This was not an open hall; most people never passed the first threshold.

The equinoxes fall on or about 20 March and 22 September, the solstices on or about 21 June and 21 December. On those mornings the effects described above happen at sunrise and last only while the sun is low, so they are seen only by people at the temple at dawn.

On an ordinary visit the sun is long up, and what you see is the arrangement rather than the light: the main doorway, the passage beyond it and the two slabs either side of the inner door. From in front of the doorway the line through to the back is plain enough that the dawn takes little imagining. The sunrise openings, by separate ticket, are the only way to see the light itself, and they fill early.

The sun’s extremes are not quite where they were when the temple was built. The tilt of the earth’s axis has lessened slightly since, which at this latitude has moved the solstice sunrises along the horizon by less than a degree, while the equinox sunrise is still due east. The change is small enough that the light still falls, near enough, where it was meant to, which is why the effect can be watched at all.

The Maltese one, two and five cent coins carry an image of the temple altar at Mnajdra, so most visitors have been carrying the place about in their change before they arrive. Of everything ever built on the islands, this is what the country chose for its smallest coins.

The short route ends here and goes back the way it came: the same surfaced path, about five hundred metres uphill past Ħaġar Qim to the centre. On foot it is a steady ten minutes or more with no shade, and in summer it feels longer than the walk down; with a wheelchair it needs help. The longer routes carry on through the upper temples and along the cliff, and the medium one comes back up the slope later, from the tower.