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XXXII.—On the Human Remains, and especially the Skulls, from the Rock-Tombs at Ghain Tiffiha and Tal Horr, and from other places in Malta

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2012

John Thurnam
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Extract

The human remains from Tomb 1 at Ghain Tiffiha comprise the more important bones of two skeletons. They are generally well preserved, though very light and brittle, as would appear from the almost entire destruction of the animal matter. They are uniformly stained of a dark reddish-brown hue, and here and there incrusted with a tufaceous or stalagmitic deposit of the same colour. The bones from Tombs 2 and 3 are, on the contrary, of a pale or drab clay colour. The dark colour of the former is attributed by Captain Swann to the percolation through cracks in the limestone rock of water tinged with the highly-coloured soil with which many fissures in the upper limestone of Malta are filled. The Tombs 2 and 3, on the contrary, had become filled with clay from “Clay-bed No. 3,” and hence the difference.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , 1867 , pp. 488 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1867

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References

page 491 note a Meigs, Catalogue of Crania, 1857, p. 28, No. 1352; Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. xl.; Indigenous Races, p. 314.

page 491 note b Ben-Djemma, otherwise Bingenna. Mr. Vance mentions a mummy case, “from a tomb in the Bingenna mountains,” resembling those found in Egypt, and which is preserved in the Library at Valetta. Archœologia, xxix. 235. The sepulchral caves of Ben-Djemma are a series of galleries with lateral chambers or catacombs hewn in the face of the cliffs, in the south-west of the island of Malta. There are other traces, besides the rock-hewn tombs, of the existence of an ancient town, though no record of its name or history survives. In his Malte et le Goze, p. 21, M. Frederick la Croix remarks: “Whoever the inhabitants of this city may have been, it is manifest, from what remains of their works, that they were not strangers to the processes of art. The sepulchral caves, amounting to a hundred in number, receive light by means of little apertures, some of which are decorated like a finished doorway. In others, time and the action of the humid atmosphere have obliterated all traces of such ornament and left only the weathered rock … The chambers set apart for sepulture are excavated at a considerable distance from the entrance in the inmost recesses of the galleries and are of admirable design.”

page 492 note a I substitute “woman” for “man,” as printed in the Canadian Journal for March 1863, on the authority of Dr. D. Wilson himself, in a letter with which he has favoured me, The description of this skull is contained in his interesting and useful memoir On the Significance of Certain Ancient British Skull-forms, p. 8–12.

page 492 note b I have to thank my friend R. T. Gore, Esq. of Bath, for copies of drawings showing both the face and the profile of a skull said to be derived from “a tomb of very ancient date at Malta in 1838,” but which, on comparison with Dr. Adams's photograph, I cannot doubt to be, with it, representations of one and the same skull. I have briefly referred to both the Ben-Djemma and the Hagiar Kim skull, in Memoirs Anthrop. Soc. of London, vol. i. p. 164.

page 492 note c These excavations are described by Mr. J. G. Vance in the Archœologia, vol. xxix. p. 227. The only notice of human remains in Mr. Vance's memoir is that in the following passage: “On examining the bones, which during the process of excavation were dug up in great quantities amongst the rubbish, we were led to suppose that the victims offered generally consisted of small animals, such as sheep, lambs, or even birds : there are, nevertheless, some which belong to a larger species of carnivorous quadruped, as also a few human remains ; from which we may infer that the life of man was on peculiar occasions required to form a part in a mysterious and barbarous ceremony.” (p. 230.) Some additional diggings were made in the interior of Hagiar Kim, in 1852, by Charles Newton, Esq. of the British Museum, as briefly referred to in the Archaological Journal, vol. ix. p. 299. The objects seem to have consisted exclusively of fragments of ancient pottery, specimens of which are preserved in the British Museum.

Mr. Rhind's observations on Hagiar Kim are given in the Archceological Journal, vol. xiii. p. 397. In the memoir of this lamented antiquary by John Stuart, Esq. (Edin. 1864, p. 21) there is a brief reference to this skull and the circumstances of its discovery. It is difficult to reconcile with the notice in The Malta Magazine the statement of Mr. Ehind, that “it was found with crumbling bones in a species of crypt in the megalithic remains at Hagiar Kim ;” unless he intends by the name of crypt the oval chamber No. 12, which is “31 feet long by 12 wide.”

page 493 note a Mr. Busk has also figured the skull from Tal Horr described below.

page 494 note a The skull is briefly referred to by Professor Nilsson in Die Ureinwohner des Scandinavischen Nordens. 1863. p. 20. “Ich selbst habe einen Menschenschädel erhalten, welcher in einer Nische der einen (Maltesischen) Seitenkammer gefunden wurde.”

page 495 note a Lib. v. c. 12. See Kenrick's Phoenicia, p, 108; and articles “Melita” and “Gaulos” in Smith's Dictionary of Geography.

page 495 note b Archæologia, xxii. 295.

page 495 note c An antiquary as cautious as the late Mr. Rhind attributes to the Phoenicians “some at least of the very numerous rock catacombs” of Malta. Archœologia, xxxviii. 268. He refers to Vassalo's brochure, Monumenti Antichi nel Gnuppo di Malta. See Art Journal, N. S. vol. v. Phœnician inscriptions are not quite unknown in Malta, though I am not able to refer to any from or connected directly with tombs. In the Malta Penny Magazine, vol. i. one is figured, and a translation is attempted by Prof. Marmora.

page 495 note a Mem. della Reale Accad. di Torino, t. xxi. ser. Ii0, 1863. See the abstract of this memoir by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, in the Anthropol. Review, London, 1864, vol. ii. p. 30; also Dr. Nicolucci's later “Note sur quelques crânes Phéniciens trouvés dans la nécropole de Tharros, ile de Sardaigne.” Bull, de la Soc. D' Anthrop. t. v. 1864, p. 703; t. vi. p. 103. In the original memoir are three full-sized plates of the skull. Our Maltese skulls may likewise be advantageously compared with another series of ancient crania from the Mediterranean coasts, viz. with those of the Japyges of Southern Italy, also described by Prof. Nicolucci, Sulla Stirpe Japigica, e soprà tre Crani, &c. Atti del' Accad. delle Scienze, &c. vol. ii. No. 20. 1866.

page 497 note a I have added to the table of measurements those of a sixth skull, supposed to be Phoenician, derived from a cemetery at Pinita in Sicily. The age of the tombs was proved by objects found in them bearing inscriptions in Phoenician characters. The skull was obtained by Signor Italia-Nicastro. The measurements are those of the distinguished anthropologist Signor Nicolucei, who has minutely described it. Bull, de la Soc. D'Anthrop. 1865. t. vi. p. 701–707; t. vii. pp. 341, 537. Three other skulls from this Phoenician cemetery are named, but are, I believe, too fragmentary for measurement.

page 498 note a Considering their rudeness and barbaric form, they are remarkable for smoothness of surface. Had Dr. Birch's suggestion (History of Ancient Pottery, i. 155), that travellers should collect fragments of pottery from Phœnician sites and deposit them in European museums, been complied with, we should be better acquainted than we are with the character of the fictile productions of that people.

page 498 note b There is a strong resemblance in the form of the three-lobed mouths of the jug from the Ghain Tiffiha tomb No. 1 and that of the mouths of many of the pitcher-shaped painted Greek vases in the British Museum. Mr. Franks assures me that the Ghain Tiffiha pottery is Greek, circa 200 B.C.