[Illustration:  PLATE III TEMPLE OF MNAIDRA, MALTA.  APSE OF CHIEF ROOM
               To face p. 100]

Returning to the area E we find in the south-west wall an elaborate doorway (Pl.  II, Fig.  I, p. 82) leading to a rectangular room H.  The doorway consists of two tall pillars with a great lintel laid across the top.  The space between the pillars is closed by a fixed vertical slab in which is a window-like aperture similar to that which gives access to Room F.  All the stones in this doorway are ornamented with pit-marks.  The rectangular room H has niches in its walls to the north, south, and west.  Each niche is formed by a pair of uprights with a block laid across the top.  The west niche is occupied by a horizontal table or slab (e) supported at its centre by a stone pillar 39 inches in height, of circular section narrowing in the centre (visible through the doorway in Pl.  II, Fig.  I).  The southern niche contains an ordinary trilithon table (f):  the northern niche is damaged, but apparently held a table like that of the western.

The area I consists of only half an ellipse, the southern half being replaced by the area H, which we have already described.  It has a rectangular niche to the west containing a fine trilithon with a cover-slab nearly 10 feet long.

The whole of the southern half of the Mnaidra temple is surrounded by a wall of huge rough blocks of stone, presenting a great contrast to the dressed slabs of which the inner walls are formed.  They are placed alternately with their broad faces and their narrow edges outwards.  The roughness of this enclosure wall gives the structure a remarkably wild and craggy appearance from a distance.  The northern half of Mnaidra is clearly a later addition.

There is no doubt as to the way in which the areas were roofed.  In the apse-like ends of the elliptical rooms the horizontal courses are corbelled, i.e. each course projects slightly forward over the last.  Thus the space narrows as the walls rise, until the aperture is small enough to be roofed by great slabs laid across.  The corbelling of the apse is just perceptible in Pl.  III.  Whether the roofing of the Mnaidra temple was ever complete it is impossible to say:  in any case the system we have described could only be applied to the apsidal portions of the areas, and their centres must either have been open to the sky or roofed quite simply with slabs.

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 facade 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.  Four elliptical chambers, one of which is at a much higher level than the rest of the building,