Tal-Qadi Temple
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The Tal-Qadi Temple is a megalithic temple in Salina, limits of
Naxxar Naxxar () is a town and local council in the Northern Region of Malta. The population in March 2014 was 14,891. The Naxxar Church is dedicated to Our Lady of Victories. The annual village feast is celebrated on 8 September. It formerly hoste ...
,
Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...
. It is in a very bad state of preservation, with only the temple's general outline still visible.


Site

The site of Tal-Qadi was possibly in use around 4000 BC during the
Ġgantija phase Ġgantija (; "place of giants") is a megalithic temple complex from the Neolithic era (–2500 BC), on the Mediterranean island of Gozo in Malta. The Ġgantija temples are the earliest of the Megalithic Temples of Malta and are older than the ...
of Maltese prehistory, but the temple itself was built during the Tarxien phase between 3300 and 3000 BC. The temple continued to be used during the Tarxien Cemetery phase, since pottery shards from that era have been found. Tal-Qadi is the only temple in Malta which is orientated to the north-east. Most other temples face the south or south-east, but in the case of Tal-Qadi, this would not have been possible since there is a steep slope in that direction. Today, the temple is in poor condition, with few remains visible apart from its general outline. The remains of a central area and two apses can still be seen. The temple probably contained another two apses, giving it a four-apse shape which was typical of the late temple period. No traces of the temple's façade exist.


Excavation and recent history

The scattered remains of the temple, spread out on an upper and a lower field, were discovered by Henry Sant, a government civil engineer, in 1916. The area was excavated in 1927 by Themistocles Zammit and L. Upton Way. According to Zammit, years before the identification of the temple, the tenant of the site had destroyed a group of upright stones. These might have been the remains of the temple's missing façade or its outer casing. The remains of the temple were surveyed and mapped in 1952. During the early excavations, a broken globigerina limestone slab showing five sections separated by lines, and incised with star-like figures and a crescent shape in the middle was found. This slab possibly was a star map or a moon calendar. It is now located in the National Museum of Archaeology in
Valletta Valletta ( ; , ) is the capital city of Malta and one of its 68 Local councils of Malta, council areas. Located between the Grand Harbour to the east and Marsamxett Harbour to the west, its population as of 2021 was 5,157. As Malta’s capital ...
. The following pictures explain how the sky tablet of Tal-Qadi can be used in order to measure the ecliptic latitude of
The Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits around Earth at an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth's diameter). The Moon rotates, with a rotation period ( lunar day) that is synchronized to its orbital period ( lunar ...
or the planets that always apparently move along the arc of the
ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of Earth's orbit, Earth around the Sun. It was a central concept in a number of ancient sciences, providing the framework for key measurements in astronomy, astrology and calendar-making. Fr ...
:Markus Bautsch
The Tal-Qadi Sky Tablet
Wikibook, 2020, retrieved 10 November 2020
Goldenes.Tor.der.Ekliptik.Venus.P1022936.jpg, The bright
Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...
in the cone of the
zodiacal light The zodiacal light (also called false dawn when seen before sunrise) is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. Brighter around the Sun, it appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun's direct ...
8 degrees above the western horizon on 23 March 2020. This was eleven days before Venus approached the
Golden Gate of the Ecliptic The Golden Gate of the Ecliptic is an asterism (astronomy), asterism in the constellation Taurus (constellation), Taurus that has been known for several thousand years. The Asterism (astronomy), asterism is formed of the two eye-catching open sta ...
(centre) between the
Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45), is an Asterism (astronomy), asterism of an open cluster, open star cluster containing young Stellar classification#Class B, B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation Tau ...
(right) and the Hyades together with
Aldebaran Aldebaran () is a star in the zodiac constellation of Taurus. It has the Bayer designation α Tauri, which is Latinized to Alpha Tauri and abbreviated Alpha Tau or α Tau. Aldebaran varies in brightness from an apparent vis ...
(left) in the constellation Taurus (centre). Goldenes.Tor.der.Ekliptik.Venus.Ekliptik.P1022936.jpg, The ecliptic latitude of Venus (thin red dashed line), i.e. her distance from the ecliptic (thick red dashed line), is 3.0 degrees. Goldenes.Tor.der.Ekliptik.Venus.Ekliptik.Himmelstafel.P1022936.jpg, Measurement of the ecliptic latitude along the long straight edge of the tablet that was aligned to the fixed stars displayed on the sky tablet Goldenes.Tor.der.Ekliptik.Venus.Ekliptik.Himmelstafel.Namen.P1022936.jpg, Position of the aligned tablet between the bright stars of the night sky with the present-day constellations


Full history


Full history
p. 36-44.


References


External links


National Inventory of the Cultural Property of the Maltese Islands
* Wikibook: The Tal-Qadi Sky Tablet {{European megaliths Buildings and structures completed in the 4th millennium BC Megalithic Temples of Malta Neolithic sites Naxxar 1916 archaeological discoveries Archaeological discoveries in Malta National Inventory of the Cultural Property of the Maltese Islands