Naturally there are considerable local differences in the shapes of the figures from the various countries we have enumerated, and it may be that no single hypothesis will explain them all.

There are other megalithic buildings in Malta besides the three which we have discussed, but none of them call for more than passing mention.  On the heights of Cordin or Corradino, overlooking the Grand Harbour of Valletta, there are no less than three groups, all of which have been lately excavated.  In all three we see signs of the typical arrangement of elliptical areas one behind another, and in the finest of the three the curved facade and the paved court which lies before it are still preserved.

It was for a long time believed that there were no dolmens in Malta.  Professor Tagliaferro has been able to upset this belief by discovering two, one near Musta and the other near Siggewi.  It is hardly credible that these are the only two dolmens which ever existed in Malta.  More will no doubt yet be found, especially in the wild north-west corner of the isle.

The megalithic builders of Malta did not confine their achievements to structures above ground, they could also work with equal facility below.  In the village of Casal Paula, which lies about a mile from the head of the Grand Harbour of Valletta, is a wonderful complex of subterranean chambers known as the Hypogeum of Halsaflieni, which may justly be considered as one of the wonders of the world.

The chambers, which seem to follow no definite plan, are excavated in the soft limestone and arranged in two storeys connected by a staircase, part of which still remains in place.  The finest rooms are in the upper storey.  The largest is circular, and contains in its walls a series of false doors and windows.  It is in this room that the remarkable nature of the work in the hypogeum is most apparent.  On entering it one sees at once that the intention of the original excavator was to produce in solid rock underground a copy of a megalithic structure above ground.  Thus the walls curve slightly inwards towards the top as do those of the apses of Mnaidra and Hagiar Kim, and the ceiling is cut to represent a roof of great blocks laid across from wall to wall with a space left open in the centre where the width would be too great for the length of the stones.  The treatment of the doors and windows recalls at once that of the temples above ground.  The mason was not content, when he needed a door, to cut a rectangular opening in the rock; he must represent in high relief the monolithic side-posts and lintel which were the great features of the megalithic ‘temples’ of Malta.  Nor has he failed in his intention, for, as one moves from room to room in the hypogeum, one certainly has the feeling of being in a building constructed of separate blocks and not merely cut in the solid rock.  No description can do justice to the grace of the curves and the flow of the line in the circular chamber and in the passage beyond it, and we have here the work of an architect who felt the aesthetic effect of every line he traced.