Medical votive offerings in the Maltese Islands

Abstract

The Maltese group of islands -Malta, Gozo, Kemmuna, Kemmunet and Filfla- cover an area of just over 120 square miles. They form a stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, being fifty-eight miles distant from Sicily and I 8o miles away from the North African shore. Malta and Gozo are renowned for the number of Stone Age temples they contain. Archaeologists have expressed the opinion that some of the enclosures of these temples were sacred to a healing deity. This is suggested by the discovery of clay and limestone objects consisting of (i) two models of women lying asleep on a kind of stretcher of wicker work, and (ii) several votive offerings in the shape of parts of the human body. It is believed that the sleeping ladies represent devotees who went to the Hypogeum temple at Hal Saflieni, near Paola, to consult the oracle through the practice of oneiromancy. This was a form of dream interpretation after the patient had been aroused from a hypnotic state induced deliberately by means of drugs or other means. In ancient Egypt dreams were regarded with reverence and the faithful believed that their prayers were rewarded by the gods with an indication, in their dreams, of the remedies which their illness required. Similar practices prevailed also in the temple-hospitals of classical Greece where the patient is said to have had the line of treatment revealed to him in his sleep. It is, therefore, quite possible that such methods were likewise followed in Malta by the Hypogeum priests in the treatment of disease about I500 B.C. Whatever might have happened in Malta in Neolithic days, it is very striking to come across similar parallels in modern times where sick persons claim to have been healed by a heavenly power while in the sleeping state. This article studies the correlation between religion and healing through medical votive offerings and associated objects of Malta, covering from prehistory to the 19th century.