Underground Entrances
The Maltese Cave Entrance
The Maltese Cave entrance is on the island of Malta. This island is
the largest of a group of three islands, in the sea that divides
Europe from Africa, the Mediterranean. The little Maltese islands lay
well off the coast of a much larger island, Sicily, halfway between
the Libyan seaport of Tripoli and Calabria of Italy's Calabrese
people who are located in the toe of the bootlike formation of Italy.
The three Maltese islands are composed of Gozo, Comino and Malta.
They represent one of the smallest archipelagoes in the world,
survivors of those remote days when continents were of a different
shape. Those pre-cataclysm days when Atlantis and Mu may have
existed, the days when there was a land bridge between Europe and
Africa. Those days when the entire Mediterranean area was merely a
series of large lakes.
Malta is the principle island of the three. It reaches a width of
almost nine miles, while it is all of 17½ miles in length. Gozo is
not as long as Malta is wide and Comino is almost a dot which
separates them. Comino has at times boasted of a total population of
50 people.
Malta is the most southern island, 180 miles from the African coast.
It was an ancient center of civilization at the time when the
Phoenicians from Carthage invaded and began to rule it. At that time
blood sacrifice was not new to the Maltese and they readily accepted
the priests of Moloch as another name for "Baal," the Sun or Fire
God. These priests offered up human sacrifice to their god, one who
rejoiced in the sacrifice of human victims and the outcries of the
victims' parents.
Since the time of the Carthaginians, Malta has had many rulers:
Romans, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Castilians. Then France ruled the
island for a short time before it became the British possession it
now is.
However, with all this varied history, and regardless of the many
nations who ruled them, the people of those islands still speak the
ancient Canaanite, Semitic tongue, the speech of the Phoenicians, and
the mother tongue of Queen Dido, who was the founder of Carthage.
Malta was the birthplace of Carthage's most famous citizen, the man
who made Rome tremble at the height of his power: Hannibalone of the
world's greatest generals.
On the northeast shore of Malta there are a number of large bays. One
of these is known as Grand Harbor. This bay has a point of land
extending into it upon which the capital of the Maltese Islands, the
city of Valletta, is built. A few miles inland from this town toward
the south, overlooking the plain which leads to the shore, is a large
plateau known as the Corradino. The little village of Casal Paula is
built on this plateau, and from the village one can view Valletta,
Grand Harbour, the plain leading to it, and also look out to the sea.
In this small village of Casal Paula during the year 1902 workmen,
who were digging a well, literally fell into the earth. They had once
again uncovered the outer room of the Maltese Cave entrance. Since
the well was to be dug for a house which was on the main street
named "Hal Saflieni," and because this first cave was later
discovered to be complex of caves, three of which were a series of
chambers excavated out of solid rock on three even lower levels for
each chamber, this entrance is known as the "Hypogeum of Hal
Saflienti." A hypogeum is the Latin name for an underground
structure.
Later this series of underground rooms was discovered to have been
located in the middle of an ancient neolithic village. From the
construction of the entrance stones, it is now assumed that at
certain times a human sacrifice was chained before the entrance. The
entrance and the walls and ceilings of some of the passageways and
rooms have been found to be decorated with red ochre primitive art
designs, but when first discovered the three caves were crammed with
as many as 30,000 skeletons of men, woman, and children. After all
these bones were cleared out, the primitive murals were discovered.
They took the forms of diamond shapes, as well as oblated and
elongated ovals, all of which were joined together with wavy lines
and whirls. These decorations had been created solely from the
application of red ochre, by the most primitive of methods.
Once past the entrance, a narrow passageway leads down into the first
room. It is in this room, that the "Oracle" may be found. The Oracle
is a hemispherical hole in the wall, a which is lower than the mouth
of an ordinary-sized man. It is about two feet in diameter, and one
can speak into it. A curved projection carved out of the back of the
cave then acts as a sounding board. The voice is amplified and caused
to resound throughout all the other caves. It creates an effect which
must have frightened the primitives into sacrificing many of the
members of their tribe to the being who spoe with the "Voice of God."
If you continue down through the narrow and low passageways, you come
to another room. The center of this room has a circular stone altar
with runnels on it, the use of which can only be guessed at. Carved
in the walls of this room are many niches, the bases of which are
like bunk beds. They have hollows scooped out for the heads and
bodies, as well as the feet of four-foot-high individuals and some
are even smaller.
Leading downward from this room is a small, narrow passageway, ending
in another even larger underground room, which has narrow slit-like
entrances into other small caves which surround it. One opening,
however, is a window into another cave, the entrance to which is
covered by a huge slab of stone. This window looks down into what was
evidently a prison, but how beings only four feet tall were able to
manipulate the huge stone slab must remain a mystery.
An opening in the wall opposite the entrance to this cave leads to a
passage narrow and torturous, the entrance to the real caves. This
passage ends on a pathway which extends along the side of a vast
cleft in the earth, a pathway along the edge of a veritable chasm, a
pathway which leads ever downward to the long underground tunnels and
series of caves which are reputed to allow one to traverse the entire
length of the island and even further.
Legend has it that these passageways at one time connected with the
underground crypts from which the Catacombs of Rome were created.
This may very well be true; for the reader must remember that the
Mediterranean Sea was created after neolithic times by eathquakes and
the shifting of the earth's crust. Therefore, while the ancient
tunnels may have existed, they might have been closed by cataclysms
of this type, with the knowledge of them coming down to us only in
legends.
The tunnels under the "Hypogeum" have been sealed off ever since a
school teacher took 30 students into the caves and disapeared, guide
and all. It was stated that the walls caved in on them. Search
parties were never able to locate any trace of these people.
It has been asserted that for weeks the wailing and screaming of
children was heard underground in different parts of the island, but
no one could locate the source of the sound. If the walls caved in,
why the cave-in could not be found and excavated to free the children
remains a mystery.
How the children could live to scream for weeks later is another
involved puzzle. At any rate, the underground entrance to the caves
in Malta has been sealed off, and nobody is allowed to investigate
the site.
bachelor with only memories and ....oh yu guys know what I mean...winks..