Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/335

THE TEMPLES OF Gozo AND MALTA. chapels ; they were each covered with a single flat stone, the only trace of a roof to be found in the whole building. The chief sanctuary seems to have been in the first of the two great halls. An effort at decoration seems here to have been made, and several curious fragments have been found among the debris. The whole of the walls are covered with an ornament made up of a multitude of small holes, in which some people have chosen to see an imitation of the star-sprinkled vault of heaven (Fig. 226). : Such an explanation is, perhaps, more ingenious than well founded ; is it not more simple to suppose that the general effect was agreeable to those early architects ? A similar decoration FIG. 226. Interior of the temple of Hagiar Kiin. From Caraana. has been observed in certain parts of the temple at Gozo. 2 These myriads of stabs are no more, in our opinion, than a decoration suggested by the same ideas and carried out on the same principle as the carefully chiselled joints of which, as we have already seen, other workmen of the same race were so fond. This same decoration occurs on two fragments picked up in the principal hall at Hagiar Kim (A), and now preserved in the public library of Malta. One of the two is a slab with a decoration resembling that of one of the stones of the Giganteia. Below a 1 CARUAXA, Report, pp. 10, u. - LA MARMORA, plate i. fig. h. VOL. I. S S