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Occasionally, as at Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim, a course of horizontal blocks set at the foot of the uprights served to keep them more securely in position. With the upright block technique went hand in hand the roofing of narrow spaces by means of horizontal slabs laid across the top of the uprights.
Thus the walls curve slightly inwards towards the top as do those of the apses of Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim, and the ceiling is cut to represent a roof of great blocks laid across from wall to wall with a space left open in the centre where the width would be too great for the length of the stones. The treatment of the doors and windows recalls at once that of the temples above ground.
Thus, for instance, in the 'temple' of Hagiar Kim in Malta, there is one block of stone which measures 21 feet by 9, and must weigh many tons.
Thus at Hagiar Kim we have a pillar still standing free in a niche, and another pillar, which, to judge from its shape, must have stood free, was found in the Gigantia. On the other hand, at Mnaidra we have pillars which support slabs in a cell or shrine, and at Cordin several small pillars were found which must originally have served a similar purpose.
It is impossible that the men who possessed the skill to lay the horizontal upper courses of the Hagiar Kim temple should have taken the trouble to haul to the spot and use vast blocks over 20 feet in length where far smaller ones would have been more convenient, unless they had some deep-seated prejudice in favour of great stones. Such are the main difficulties involved by the influence theory.
Finally Halsaflieni has yielded several steatopygous figurines. Some of these resemble those of Hagiar Kim, but two are of rather different type. Each of these represents a female lying on a rather low couch. In the better preserved of the two she lies on her right side, her head on a small uncomfortable-looking pillow.
Those which cover some of the finest stones at Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim are certainly meant to be ornamental, though there may be in them a reminiscence of some religious tradition. Of the builders of the megalithic monuments themselves we cannot expect to know very much, especially while their origin remains veiled in obscurity. Yet there are a few facts which stand out clearly.
In the still more famous temple of Hagiar Kim we have a complicated building, in which the original plan has been much altered and enlarged. The main portion doubtless consisted originally of a curved façade and a pair of elliptical areas, the inner of which has been fitted with a second entrance to the north-west and completely remodelled at its south-west end.
The two greatest of these, the so-called "Phoenician temples" of Hagiar Kim and Mnaidra, were constructed on opposite sides of one of the southern valleys, each within sight of the other and of the little rocky island of Filfla. Plan of the megalithic sanctuary of Mnaidra, Malta. It consists of two halves, the more northerly of which was almost certainly built later than the other.
But he was almost certainly wrong, as recent excavation has shown, in supposing that the cells were the actual burial place of the deified heroes. A number of statuettes were found at Hagiar Kim, two of which are of pottery and the rest of limestone. One figure represents a woman standing, but in the rest she is seated on a rather low stool with her feet tucked under her.
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