have been added.  Here, too, as at Mnaidra, we find niches containing trilithon tables.  In the first elliptical area, in which the apsidal ends are divided from the central space by means of walls of vertical slabs, a remarkable group of objects was found.  In front of a well-cut vertical block stood what must be an altar, cut in one piece of stone.  It is square in section except for the top, which is circular.  On the four vertical edges are pilasters in relief, and in the front between these is cut in relief what looks like a plant growing out of a pot or box.  To the left of the altar and the vertical slab behind were an upright stone with two hanging spirals cut on it in relief, and at its foot a horizontal slab.  Both the altar and the carved stone are covered with small pit-marks.

In the outside wall of the building, quite unconnected with the interior, is a niche partly restored on old foundations, in which stands a rough stone pillar 6-1/2 feet high.  In front of this pillar is a vertical slab nearly 3 feet high, narrowing towards the base, and covered with pit-markings.  This pillar can hardly be anything but a baetyl, or sacred stone.

The temple called the Gigantia, on the island of Gozo, is no less remarkable than the two which we have already described; in one place its wall is preserved up to a height of over 20 feet.  The plan is similar to that of Mnaidra, though here the two halves seem to have been built at one and the same time.  Several of the blocks show a design of spirals in relief, while on others there are the usual pit-markings.  Another bears a figure of a fish or serpent.  At the foot of one of the trilithons was found a baetyl 51 inches in height, now in the museum at Valletta.

That these three buildings were sanctuaries of some kind seems almost certain from their form and arrangement.  We do not, however, know what was the exact nature of the worship carried on in them, though there can be no doubt that the stone tables supported by single pillars and the trilithons found in the niches played an important part in the ritual.  Sir Arthur Evans in his famous article Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult has suggested that in Malta we have a cult similar to that seen in the Mycenaean world.  This latter was an aneiconic worship developed out of the cult of the dead; in it the deity or hero was represented by a baetyl, i.e. a tree or pillar sometimes standing free, sometimes placed in a ‘dolmen-like’ cell or shrine, in which latter case the pillar often served to support the roof of the shrine.  In Malta Sir Arthur Evans sees signs of a baetyl-worship very similar to this.  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.