There can hardly be any doubt that Sir Arthur Evans is right in seeing in the Maltese temples signs of a baetylic worship.  But is he right in his further assertion that the cult was a cult of the dead?  Albert Mayr assumes that he is, and endeavours to show that the ‘dolmen-like’ cells in the niches are not altars, but stereotyped representations of the dolmen-tombs of the heroes worshipped.  He thinks that the slabs which cover them are too large for altar-tables, and that the niches in which they stand are too narrow and inaccessible to have been the scene of sacrificial rites.  Neither of these arguments has much force, nor is it easy to see how the cells are derived from dolmens.  The fact is that the word ‘dolmen-like,’ which has become current coin in archaeological phraseology, is a question-begging epithet.  The Maltese cells are not like dolmens at all, they are either trilithons or tables resting on a pillar.  They are always open to the front, and instead of the rough unhewn block which should cover a dolmen they are roofed with a well-squared slab.  If the pillar which supports the slab is, like the free-standing pillars, a baetyl, the slab is probably a mere roof to cover and protect it; if not, the slab is almost certainly a table.

At the same time, although we may not accept the hypothesis that the cell is derived from a dolmen, Sir Arthur Evans may still be right in supposing the worship to have originated in a cult of the dead.  But he was almost certainly wrong, as recent excavation has shown, in supposing that the cells were the actual burial place of the deified heroes.

A number of statuettes were found at Hagiar Kim, two of which are of pottery and the rest of limestone.  One figure represents a woman standing, but in the rest she is seated on a rather low stool with her feet tucked under her.  There is no sign of clothing, except on one figure which shows a long shirt and a plain bodice with very low neck.  All these statuettes are characterized by what is known as steatopygy, that is, the over-development of the fat which lies on and behind the hips and thighs.

Steatopygous figures have been found in many places, viz.  France, Malta, Crete, the Cyclades, Greece, Thessaly, Servia, Transylvania, Poland, Egypt, and the Italian colony of Eritrea on the Red Sea.  The French examples are from caves of the palaeolithic period; the rest mainly belong to the neolithic and bronze ages.  Various reasons have been given for the abnormal appearance of these figures.  In the first place it has been suggested that they represent women of a steatopygous type, like the modern Bushwomen, and that this race was in early days widely diffused in the Mediterranean and in South Europe.  Another hypothesis is that they represent not a truly steatopygous type of women, but only an abnormally fat type.  A third suggestion is that they portray the generative aspect of nature in the form of a pregnant goddess.