In his paper, John E. Palmer mentions having identified on the rocky hill above Mnajdra two stones which served as "true foresights" for the Equinox and Winter Solstice sightings of the Sun. Joseph S. Ellul has known about both of these stones for many years and the Equinox foresight stone was in excellent condition when I inspected it for myself towards the end of 2000 but, at some date prior to 27 March 2001, it was professionally and quite deliberately vandalized by someone equipped with a portable, electric, mason's drill - not, therefore, "by a tourist"...
Flinders Petrie states that he once saw a pyramidologist filing away one of the stones of the Great Pyramid in order to bring its measurements into closer agreement with that rogue's personal theories. An even more prevalent desire is, perhaps, that of destroying any evidence that may support the theories of one's rivals. As Don Giacomo Simonetti used to say, "If the cap fits, take it to heart!"
"If corruption could shine, we wouldn't need the Sun."
"This kind of investigation and the attendant speculation that goes with it, no matter how much it is needed, no matter how much the evidence warrants its pursuit, is, nevertheless, filled with problems. Academic and professional geologists, glaciologists, geophysicists, paleontologists, oceanographers, astronomers, astrophysicists, and a host of individuals who are members of related disciplines, do not take kindly to intrusions into their respective bailiwicks. As a rule, they tow the line of conventional interpretation as has been established as acceptable protocol within their field. This is safe. It protects careers. He who dares to contradict accepted dogma, or crosses over momentarily from his own bailiwick into another to make a pertinent observation, is often shunned or ostracized. A good example of this kind of treatment is offered in astronomer-astronaut-philosopher Brian O'Leary's recent work, Inner and Outer Space. O'Leary gives a revealing description of how painful peer pressure can be when an individual, such as himself, diverges from what is considered proper research and acceptable inquiry.
Scientists as a rule, having narrowly defined scientific methodology so that it excludes much phenomenology, seek refuge in that very methodology. As a group, they appear to be uninterested in expanding in any ways its parameters. Each discipline has become highly specialized, as we all know. Glaciologists do not keep up much with astrophysics. Geologists are not much interested in astronomy. And so down the line. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Or what it may have found. Comparative science, much like comparative literature, hardly exists. This is especially true in the United States....
Not only are the separate scientific disciplines often unaware of developments in other scientific fields, but the members of such disciplines would consider it scientific blasphemy - and there definitely is such a thing - to mention such a phenomenon as prophecy or the evidence of ancient literature in the same breath with data from their own field, which may or may not, for that matter, be accurate." (G. Cope Schellhorn, When Men Are Gods, Horus House Press, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, 1991, pp. 168-9.)
"Brian O'Leary... after observing the failure of our human attempts to understand the total reality about us, both our inner and outer space together, with conventional scientific approaches, has lately observed, 'I wonder if all of astronomy, astrophysics, and related science is not a protective decoy to keep us out of the real universe until we are ready.' The quester after truth will discover, finally, that the inward journey can be done anywhere by anyone, with eyes open or closed, in a parking lot or in the midst of the desert, as long as the quester is so willing." ( Ibid., p.37. )
Table of Contents
- Inclusion of any text does
not imply agreement with its contents and, in particular, no
writer quoted as having at one particular date subscribed to a
specific opinion ought, without further investigation, to be
presumed still to be of the same mind. As John Henry Cardinal
Newman wisely reminds us, to grow is to change, and to be perfect
implies that one has changed often.
- Letters approximately repeating matters elsewhere considered have often been shortened and editorial notes, not excepting those directly relating to St. Paul's Shipwreck or to Malta's extremely ancient yet still unexplored under-the-sea 'temples', have also been kept to a minimum.
- All readers of this page are also asked to keep it well in mind that Letters, such as those here quoted or those reproduced in Umberto Eco's and Carlo Maria Cardinal Montini's Belief or Non-Belief? (London: Continuum, 2000), ought never to be interpreted as academic treatises - they are nothing more, nor less, than ongoing contributions to an open-ended conversation between friends. Shared understanding is their aim and purpose, not point-scoring in any sort of competition!
- The 'Temple' Under The Sea
- The Story of Christmas
- Extract from Viewed From Above
- Joseph's Letter of 9 June 1995
- Joseph's Letter of 18 August 1995
- Colin's Reply of 24 August 1995
- Joseph's Letter of 13 September 1995
- Joseph's Letter of 18 September 1995
- Joseph's Letter of 7 October 1995
- Joseph's Letter of 17 March 2004
- Exploring the mind of Vere Gordon Childe
- Encyclical Letters Æterni Patris of Pope Leo XIII (1870) & Fides et Ratio of Pope John-Paul II (1998)
- De Ente Supernaturali Electronic transcription of a significant Latin reportatio prepared in Rome (1960).
- Our Lady's Statue weeps tears of blood? Pontifical Commission investigates
- Colin's Letters of 16, 19, and 22 August 2005
- For further reading...
Malta's Temple Under The Sea
Comm. S. A. Scicluna's letter about his sighting of a prehistoric, man-made, under-the-sea structure not far from Sliema was only published on 24 February 1994, some time after he had imparted the same information by word of mouth to Joseph S. Ellul one afternoon in a public square in Zurrieq, most likely because he already knew of the latter's interest in such matters from his own reading of the 1st edition of Joseph's below mentioned book, which contains two references to Atlantis (pp. 7 & 12) and, of course, many more to Noah's Flood. In April 2000, following a most unfortunate fall from a ladder and a very brief related stay in hospital, where it was determined that although his pain could be lessened, his injuries would inevitably very soon lead to his death, Comm. Scicluna passed away peacefully at his home in Sliema, and it was from there that, in the course of a most interesting telephone conversation, he very kindly and generously authorised my continuing use of one of his maps and some of his notes about his now well known discoveries in St. Paul's Bay.
Academician Doctor John David Solomon (1906-1998) was the field-geologist in Louis Leakey's team at Olduvai Gorge during the crucial pioneering years, beginning from the 1928-29 season onwards. Important information about his subsequent life and work is freely available on several of our Internet pages. Related inquiries from interested researchers are always welcome.
Malta's above-featured and older-than-Noah's-ark under-the-sea 'temple' may prove to be the largest known prehistoric complex structure on planet Earth. Its present submarine location results from Noah's Flood, as amateur archæologist Joseph S. Ellul first explained in 1988 in his important study Malta's Prediluvian Culture at the Stone-Age Temples with special reference to ĦaÄ¡ar Qim, Għar Dalam, Cart-ruts, Il-Misqa, il-Maqluba and Creation (Malta: Printwell, 1988 ). Copies of its updated 1994 German translation: Die Steinzeittempel Maltas und ihre Vorsintflutliche Kultur mit besonderem bezug zu ĦaÄ¡ar Qim, Għar Dalam, Cart-ruts, Il-Misqa, Il-Maqluba & Schöpfung) may still be obtained from the author at his home address: ĦaÄ¡ar Qim House, 49 St. Catherine Street, ZURRIEQ ZRQ 06, Malta. This book remains the only currently available detailed and authoritative source of factual information about the true alignment of all of Malta's and Gozo's prehistoric temples to the major-standstills of the Moon - and not (save for one of the 'temples' at Mnajdra) to the Sun. Despite Mario Vassallo's imaginative claims in his 3-part article in Malta's The Sunday Times, 23 & 30 January and 6 February 2000, only one of the Mnajdra 'Temples' was deliberately oriented to the Sun. The celestial orientations of prehistoric edifices cannot safely be calculated simply by considering their ground-plan - one must have credible information about the original disposition of their walls, about any openings in these or in the roof (if there was a roof), and about the then height of the surrounding hills…
I am indebted to Joseph Ellul for several related oral and written personal communications from which he has kindly given me permission to quote. Intimate knowledge within the Ellul family over four generations of the Ħaġar Qim temple-complex in particular is an important source of otherwise extremely hard to find information regarding the present location of what, Joseph insists, is (as David Furlong has also pointed out) material evidence in favour of Noah's Flood having been the precise cause of the first destruction of all these ancient edifices.
Although the already documented identification of the remains of a very large prehistoric 'Temple' at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea between longitudes 14 degrees 30 minutes 31 seconds and 15 seconds East, between latitudes 35 degrees 56 minutes 15 seconds and 49 seconds North, and some 2.14 nautical miles (3 kilometres) off Malta's north-eastern shore (cf. the reverse-video image shown above, extracted from the post-World-War-II high-altitude aerial-, not satellite-, photograph of Malta very kindly made available to us by Joseph S. Ellul of Zurrieq) still remains to be evidentially confirmed by systematic exploration of that site, not less than three other notionally and perhaps also physically distinct submarine sites of prediluvial origin have additionally been located by diver-photographers Kurt & Shaun Arrigo and others in circumstances that place their existence, if not their interpretation, beyond all reasonable doubt.
One of these is in St. George's Bay, St. Julian's, at the coordinates already very approximately indicated by us in 2000 A.D. in the light of information kindly made available by Shaun Arrigo. Dr. Anton Mifsud subsequently informed me that when diving himself in that same general area he saw a clearly ancient site at what his own GPS indicated to be 35.55.954N 14.29.738E. This claim appears to correspond to that first publicly disclosed in the 2001 revised 2nd edition of Echoes of Plato's Island where this site is, notionally at least, distinguished from that photographed by Kurt and Shaun Arrigo by its being referred to by a "legally registered" "name" as the "Janet-Johann site" and is said to have been "identified" by Janet Trevisan rather than Doctor Mifsud.
Early in 2002, however, it was pointed out to me that, quite independent of any legalities, none of these locations are far removed from each other. They are all covered by the same sea waters. Their present and future exploration presents very similar, if not quite identical challenges to us all.
Aloisio's complaint (in his article "Tarxien temples authenticity questioned", The Malta Independent on Sunday, 13 August 2000, p.48) that much archaeological restoration work at Tarxien in the 1950s was done badly is seriously misleading. Despite some improvements, most of Malta's prehistoric remains are still insufficiently cared for and, for example at Mnajdra, more damage appears on occasions to have been inflicted on them by their supposed guardians and restorers than by deliberate vandals - nor do the regrettable events of early April 2001 in any way warrant our modifying that statement.
My original photocopy of part of the aerial photograph of the whole island of Malta from which this image has been scanned providentially represents that portion of Malta and of the sea around it which it shows on exactly the same scale as does the copy of the now out of print Hildebrand's Travel Map of Malta (published by Progress Press, Valletta) which I had with me when visiting Joseph S. Ellul at his home in Zurrieq in January 1999 (Reference 1-39-3). Although allegedly prepared using this same scale of 1:38,000, the same publisher's more recent edition (ISBN 3-88989-167-5), which graphically represents the increased size of the islands' towns and villages, like all other so far published maps of Malta I have been able to consult, does not match.
Although Zecharia Sitchin, whose recent report provides welcome additional evidence in favour of his well-argued claim that the ancient Sumerians' "12th planet" is no mere myth but a solid scientific fact, also discussed several aspects of Malta's prehistoric heritage with Joseph S. Ellul when he first visited the island in June 1999, his three typed pages of first thoughts about the archipegalo's "temples", while welcome as a public acknowledgment of their importance, take us no further forward towards a proper understanding of their significance and, indeed, partly reflect current erroneous thinking within the archaeological establishment which for many years now Joseph himself has been doing his best to correct - consider, for instance, the list of the calendric alignments of Malta's neolithic temples in his 1988 Malta's Prediluvian Culture at the Stone-Age Temples (p.25):
Excavations on Gozo and at various prehistoric sites on Malta itself or below its territorial waters still have a very considerable future. Deep-sea fishermen, for example, have already seen what appears to be an ancient stone circle some distance out from St. Paul's island at Sikka l-Bajda. Excavations first began at Ħaġar Qim on the Maltese mainland, the site of the oldest and also of the only "temple" so far studied to be constructed out of globigerine instead of coralline limestone, not, as Joseph frequently states in his book, in 1839 (the date of the first "official" dig), but shortly before 1834, and J. G. Vance's earliest available and, indeed, only related official report of 2 April 1840 is almost entirely lacking in accurate information about where any of the various items found on site were located when they were first discovered. Vance, in fact, left almost all the real work to the local inhabitants and visited them only briefly in the evenings to obtain that minimum of information his "report" required!
The portion of the main "temple"-complex at Ħaġar Qim shown top left currently has three super-imposed stone floors and is that part of the oldest edifice which was later incorporated in the second oldest part of this complex - that to its right, which has two super-imposed floors. The largest and most recent part of this complex has, as one would naturally expect, only one stone floor.
Paul I. Micallef died in 1998 but, possibly because the splendid equinoctial image on the cover of his internationally well received Mnajdra Prehistoric Temple - A Calendar In Stone (1992) was seen on Russian television when President Bush and Gorbachev met for their historic meeting on Malta, only very few of his readers have noticed that not all the solar alignments (indicated approximately and in blue above) he has so patiently documented would, in fact, have actually been visible to Mnajdra residents whenever its "temple" walls were standing at full height!
Leonard Schlain seems to be unaware of Ishtar's share in the rise of "patriarchy" and (unlike Margaret Murray who directed a party of excavators at Borg in-Nadur, 1922-27) never to have visited Malta, but his The Alphabet versus the Goddess (1999) contains, as well as some valuable observations about the development of Islam, at least one possibly highly relevant mention of Inanna - whose own identification with Isis is, to say to least, problematic; Neith and Athena, on the other hand, are not so much two names for one and the same goddess, as the very same name written twice, but in opposite directions.
Much more remains to be said. Although there are many good guide-book to the Maltese islands, much of what they say about the prehistoric "temples" is less than accurate, and relatively few persons are likely to have either the time or opportunity to studying even that portion of the relevant literature which I have itemised elsewhere. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that the first "temples" to be initially excavated in a proper and scientific manner were those at Tarxien where, in the early years of the 20th century, Carmel Ellul worked as site-foreman and personal aide to Malta's foremost archaeologist to date, Professor Sir Themistocles Zammit, more affectionately known as "Temi".
Perhaps because the Maltese, who were at that time under British rule, are almost all Roman Catholics with a great love of their Pope, who at that time was an Italian, and undoubtedly partly because almost all educated Maltese citizens speak both Italian and English as well as their own native language, Zammit's published accounts of his excavations pay at least lip-service to the still common theories (1) that ancient Maltese culture was initially dependent on that of Sicily, and (2) that Malta's prehistoric temples date from the "copper-age".
In fact, (1) no Sicilian cultural remains predate or even equal in age any of Malta's prehistoric temples; (2) no native copper has ever been found on Malta, Gozo or Comino, and, although the two copper axe-heads and other "copper-age" remains found at Tarxien are evidence of the islanders' then cultural intercourse with other Mediterranean peoples, they do not date back to the times of temple-building.
Offshore underwater archaeological explorations - whether at the site shown on our aerial photo-map or at any other location(s), in addition to being expensive and so quite out off the question without generous international assistance, will require the courageous development of new skills and their persistent application to the task in hand - but above all, despite the clamour of our news-hungry world, they will also require supreme integrity and patience, if the mistakes of the 1830's and '40's are not to be repeated!
At least one ancient terracotta dish has already been removed from one of these sites. If it should happen that, as a result of very carefully checking them with a metal-detector before anything has been disturbed, several copper artifacts come to light, it might then be reasonable at least to speculate that in prediluvial times today's Maltese archipelago served as a combined hospital-settlement and holiday-home for the Igigi between their periods on duty as Watchers orbitting the Earth...
Another question and one of much more immediate interest is whether or not there are any surviving prediluvial inscriptions among these ruins. If so, their successful location, accurate transcription, authentic decipherment and faithful translation into one or more postdiluvial languages (and that without the help of Ashurbanipal and his enviable ability to "understand the enigmatic words in the stone carvings from the days before the Flood") will clearly merit priority attention - and Kurt Schildmann's work has already helped us all enormously in that respect.
A still untranslated inscription in the niche just below the point of the Great Pyramid's entrance-gable at Giza reads: "VO-O" (please refer to the diagram) and may not, therefore, be entirely unrelated to the quasi-"VH", "-|", "D" and other puzzling elements of uncertain significance clearly legible on this fascinating, ancient tablet (exhibit TQ/S1 in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta). But, one step at a time!
In a letter he addressed to me on 17 November 1999 Joseph S. Ellul wrote: "You remember the discussion we had about the depth of the sea. The paper cutting said 25 feet and the sea-map said 100 feet [actually 234-342 feet]. They were both right, because the temple is built on a hill like all the other temples on land, and the rest of the bottom is about 100 feet deep [and more!]...
I told Zecharia Sitchin about this temple and he contacted a German who comes to Malta twice a year. This German, Hubert Zeitlmair came to me with divers; I gave them a photo-map and instructions how to locate the spot. Afterwards, he put some details [of their related but somewhat different find] on the Internet, and they made a hit with it. They interviewed Zeitlmair and myself on the paper and also on TV."
On 31 October 1999 il Mument, a Maltese government newspaper, published this front-page article about the discovery. What follows is a composite English translation -
UNIQUE DISCOVERY IN THE MALTESE SEAS - Discovery of Structures that resemble megalithic temples in Maltese waters, by Dione Borg:
Recently, structures that resemble megalithic temples have been discovered on the sea-bed in Maltese waters. These are currently being studied to establish whether they are actually unique megalithic temples.
These studies are being carried out by foreign archaeologists, as this discovery has been considered to be of great archaeological importance, and has raised great interest amongst foreign archaeologists.
Based on the information that il-Mument has, this discovery has already been reported in Augsburg, Germany by Professor and Archaeologist Hubert Zeitlmair, in a Paleo-Astronaut Society meeting, on the 18th of August 1999.
Effectively, the discovery was made on the 13th of July 1999 at 10 a.m. and was photographed. The diver/cameraman who video-filmed the structures was Shaun Arrigo, while the photographer who took any separate on-site still-photos was his brother Kurt.
Il-Mument interviewed Professor Zeitlmair, who explained that these structures are two stone-circles. [?!] Also with them are other fallen and broken structures which are long and rectangular, and on a sort of platform. They were found at a depth of approximately 8 to 15 meters around 3 km [actually no more than 1 km] off the East coast of Malta.
Prof. Zeitlmair also said that these structures are full of vegetation, however, as can clearly be seen from the photos and film-footage, they resemble a lot of the temples from the period of Ħaġar Qim.
In the zone where the underwater structures have been found, it seems there are also some form of (cart-)ruts, and these resemble those found around on the island. [Despite Zeitlmair's claim on that occasion, what Shaun & Kurt actually observed were not identifiable as cart-ruts but simply as "large narrow channels".]
The discovery of these structures will give rise to diverse archaeological interpretations, and the first implications are that they could be compared with the temples of ĦaÄ¡ar Qim, Ä gantija and Mnajdra, and with the Hypogeum...
This archaeological discovery has also renewed discussions amongst archaeologists regarding the period in which the temples were built. Prof. Zeitlmair sustains that these structures were built a lot earlier than the other megalithic temples in Malta are usually alleged to have been built, and the questions that he is trying to answer are: who really built these structures, when did they actually build them, and for what purpose?
Archaeologist Zeitlmair derives his inspiration from Zecharia Sitchin's series of books The Earth Chronicles which explore the origins of ancient civilizations. From these books, and based on how and where the prehistoric temples in Malta and Gozo were built, Zeitlmar has come up with the possibility of there being more temples and prehistoric structures that are still waiting to be excavated or discovered. His thesis seems to be built around the possibility that these structures, too, will eventually be found somewhere inside Maltese territorial waters." [Some, for sure, at the location Joseph S. Ellul and I have already quite clearly specified - admittedly without knowing for sure whether the site Comm. S. A. Scicluna dived down to himself was that one, or instead the other that Shaun Arrigo and his brother subsequently visited and photographed.]
Joseph S. Ellul comments: "I have explained that everything there is artificial; it is not natural rocks. The underwater photos also show two chapels, oval-shaped...
I think that Sitchin has already got a copy of the first video and that he has contacted some U.S. archæologists. The professor of archæology in Malta is Antonio Bonanno [author of Malta - An Archaeological Paradise (new edition, Valletta 1997) which quite correctly notes that some of Malta's famous "goddess-figures" have "no sexual attributes"] who has studied Roman history from books… his comment about this temple? - "there's nothing written about it"! [Whether Scicluna's letter above is about "it" or its near neighbour(s) is, pending our promotion to a higher because posthumous viewpoint, now an insoluble puzzle!]
Malta's Minister of Education was in Paris at a meeting of UNESCO when everyone started discussing this new-found temple.The minister was dumbfounded and returned to Malta to see what had happened... From what I have said on TV and from what has been written in the papers all Malta now knows that this underwater feature is a temple, because I have explained it all - and why, archæologically. I have also lent a copy of the video to the archæological circle of Malta for their members to see it… and they are very interested.”
William Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University have recently followed Joseph S. Ellul's earlier example by suggesting that the Great Flood described in Genesis (Chapters 7-8) took place at some time between 5600 and 5500 BC, prior to which time what is now the Black Sea had been a relatively shallow, inland, fresh-water lake separated by some sort of ”portal” from the geographically more elevated surface of the then Mediterranean.
As well as devoting an entire book to this question (Noah's Flood, Simon & Schuster 1999), both authors presented their theory live on BBC television (The Great Flood, BBC-2, 31 January 1999) shortly after I first raised the issue of Malta's under-the-sea temple on the Internet, and the evidence they advanced in favour of their hypothesis is both extensive and varied. Fresh-water mussels are found where salt-water clams might be expected. Sweeping changes are known to have occurred in Anatolia round about this time. Several elements in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh lend support to the view that the Deluge the Bible links to the fortunes of Noah and his family did really happen [whether or not within this particular solar system is, however, for students of Gilgamesh rather hard to know!]. Geologists acknowledge the coming and going of some sort of mini-ice age within this specified time-frame.
The scenario these authors present supposes the earth was then cooling while the sea was getting warmer. People fled away from the no longer life-nurturing Anatolian plateau and sought refuge in the comparative warmth of the Black Sea region, but they were obliged to retreat even more when the expanding Mediterranean burst through the Bosphorus barrier. Many of them were drowned, of course, but some of them had already provided themselves with boats, as soon as they sensed the approach of danger, and they were also able to save some of their all important livestock in this way. Hence, the tradition of a Great Flood.
Without denying that Ryan & Pitman's theory is an improvement on that initially proposed by Sir Leonard Wooley's wife, when her husband was struggling to account for the presence of a mere 10'-stratum of mud at one particular site he was then excavating in the Tigris-Euphrates valley in Mesopotamia, their dates may be wrong and they may have mistakenly taken to be a cause what was no more than one of the effects of the Deluge. Indeed, it seems likely that when what is now the deeper, central portion of the Black Sea was a fresh-water lake, today's Mediterranean basin was also the location of - in addition to various land-surfaces nowadays submerged - not less than three such fresh-water lakes.
A pre-World-War-II documentary film, Ein Meer Versinkt, directed by Anton Kutter, the author of a book on the same theme and with the same title, strongly suggests that Adolf Hitler, one of whose dream-visions was, as explained in this film, that of a huge hydro-electric plant supplying all today's near-Mediterranean lands with electricity generated by a dam to be erected for the purpose between Morocco and Gibraltar after the Mediterranean had been emptied of all its salt-water, would not have dissented from this opinion...
Future professional investigators may conclude that the as yet only uncertainly identified underwater feature situated (approximate area shown in orange) about 3 kilometres out from St. George's Tower on the north-east coast of Malta at (according to my January 1999 calculations) an estimated depth of 39-57 fathoms at between longitudes 14 degrees 30 minutes 31 seconds and 15 seconds East and between latitudes 35 degrees 56 minutes 15 seconds and 49 seconds North, but (as explained above) actually no more than 26-50 feet below the surface - because of its location on the summit of a small hill not marked on Commander Morris H. Smyth RN's otherwise excellent 1893 survey-map of the sea-bed thereabouts (a copy of which was very kindly given to me in January 1999 by the then, as always, most helpful as well as expert staff of the Maps Department attached to the Maltese Government's Ministry of Works, when I first showed them a photocopy Joseph S. Ellul had made for me of a portion of a post-World-War-II aerial photo-map then in his possession) is, indeed, a 'temple'.
Incidentally, although no small hill is indicated at this precise location even on the 1998-corrected 22 August 1986 Crown copyright edition of Rear Admiral R. O. Morris's chart of the Approaches to Malta and Għawdex-Gozo, immediately North-West of this area the sea is marked as having a depth of no more than 19 metres, as distinct from the 38-40 metres' depth indicated for the rest of the immediately surrounding area. Since our photo-map from above undoubtedly does not lie, perhaps the rocky underwater eminence registered on this new map is not exactly where that map, a composite made from a variety of sources, specifically suggests that it is?
In any case, it was not until seven months later, on 18 August 1999, that German amateur archaeologist Doctor Hubert Zeitlmair disclosed to an Augsburg meeting of the Paleo-Astronaut Society and subsequently confirmed on Maltese television that at 10 am on 13 July 1999 he had "located a megalithic temple under water", and it is noteworthy that the already quoted article in Maltese published in the Maltese government newspaper il-Mument of 31 October 1999 importantly clarifies that the video-film footage which permitted Zeitlmair thus to specify the nature of these underwater structures was that already mentioned above as having actually been filmed at a different and closer-to-shore site by Maltese diver/cameraman Shaun Arrigo - all related still-photographs not extracted from that video had, moreover, been taken by his brother Kurt.
Doctor Zeitlmair's earlier reading of Zecharia Sitchin's books had, he explained, increased his own already established belief in the likely existence of at least one such structure. Sitchin had himself visited Malta for the first time in June 1999 when Joseph Ellul had made freely available to him, as he later did to Zeitlmair, the information he had very generously shared with me the previous January. Admittedly, the hand-written caption he added to the photo-map he gave to Zeitlmair missnamed St. George's Tower as "St. Julian's Tower" but, since that photo-map was already clear enough and it had been quite obviously to the location of St. George's Tower on it that Ellul had drawn attention in suggesting to Zeitlmair how best to locate the submarine feature shown precisely 3 cms away from it on the photo-map, no confusion ought to have resulted.
Zeitlmair's reported reference to some other pre-WorldWar-II photographic evidence that helped him direct (!) a diver to the appropriate location is, to say the least, puzzling, as cameras capable of taking suitable aerial (let alone satellite) photographs for the purpose were not then anywhere available on this particular planet - and also because "the diver" in question had already been directly briefed personally in Maltese by Joseph Ellul and, in the event, as a result of a shared hunch Shaun and Kurt had when swimming and diving in the direction Joseph had indicated, they actually attempted to make and succeeded in making their own related but different discovery at a closer-to-shore site.
Remember, too, that, even prior to Shaun Arrigo's first visual sighting of a "temple" in July 1999, corroboration for Joseph Ellul's already existing firm conviction that a "temple" was indeed to be found somewhere in that direction had not only been provided by Comm S. A. Scicluna's letter in the Sunday Times of Malta for 20 February 1994, in which Scicluna unambiguously reported what he had himself directly observed and, indeed, "located" while diving in that area some time previously - it had also, as the text of that letter itself already makes clear, been brought to the specific attention of both the Maltese Government and its archaeological establishment.
Since, however, no more than a minority of divers also write letters to the press or make a point of speaking with the President of Malta about their underwater experience, it is, of course, more than likely that Comm. S. A. Scicluna (until his death at his home in Sliema in June 2000, a member of the Malta Underwater Archæological Branch of the International Institute of Mediterranean Underwater Archæology, and something of an authority on the 1961-1985 underwater investigation of what appears to be corroborating evidence in favour of the historicity of St. Luke's account of St. Paul's Shipwreck in Acts 27:27-44) was not the first person to have noticed an under-the-sea "temple" in recent times. So who actually "located" this one first I cannot say - just as I cannot say which Maltese fisherman was the first to spot either of the two under-sea ancient stone-circles observable at Sikka l-Bajda between St. Paul's Bay and Gozo.
Although Joseph S. Ellul (not to be confused with another Maltese writer named Joseph Ellul!) no longer does any snorkelling or sea-diving himself and is not an academically qualified geologist or archæologist, his father, Carmel's expertise in these matters was very much appreciated by Professor Vere Gordon Childe (cf Proceedings of the First International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, London, August 1-6, 1932, Oxford University Press, 1934 for brief indications of professional contacts between Antonielli, Childe, Evans, Kðppel, Leakey, Rellini, Zammit, et al.) & Professor Luigi Maria Ugolini. Indeed, Sir Themistocles Zammit, as well as discussing with Carmel Ellul several aspects of his work at Għar Dalam, invariably entrusted to him direct responsibility for all the more important practical tasks involved in his own excavations both at the Tarxien and ĦaÄ¡ar Qim sites.
Joseph S. Ellul's grandfather and great-grandfather had, moreover, before that supported their families by tilling the soil as farmers of the land neighbouring that where the Ħaġar Qim temple is today open to visitors - and where the earliest excavations took place shortly before 1834.
Hence, although Joseph was employed for several very successful years as a teacher, there is (in addition to his having inherited the family treasure-trove of private papers) little of practical value he doesn't know about the nature of Maltese stone. Nor is that the end of the story.
Although, for example, Dr. Cesare Vassallo wrote in his Dei Monumenti antichi del Gruppo di Malta - Cenni Storici: Periodo Fenicio ed Egizio (2nda edizione riveduta ed accresciuta, Malta, stamperia del governo, 1876, p.29): "Non è a preterire il Teschio umano dissotterrato negli scavi di questo tempio [ĦaÄ¡ar Qim], e che si conserva di presente nel Museo della Biblioteca," that important skull 'lost' its jawbone when the archæological collection of which it formed a part was first moved from Malta's 'Biblioteca' to a newly established Archæological Museum, from which, more recently, the upper portion of the skull has also 'gone missing'.
But, human imperfections aside, what, in Ellul's view, was the origin of the gigantic inundation that, he believes, so greatly damaged Malta's ancient temples? For a short answer, I refer you to his excellent paper on that subject. It may, I think, also help if I try to spell out rather more in detail what actually lies behind these words of his in that essay: "especially the Gulf of Mexico and the Carbibbean Sea."
In Gateway to Atlantis - the search for the source of a lost civilisation, Headline Book Publishing, 2000 (which, after providentially missing the day before a plane for Malta on which I had previously booked a seat, I purchased from Books Etc. in Gatwick Airport at 10:16 on the morning of Saturday, 22 January 2000, perused it - despite having had no more than 10 hours sleep in the preceding 6 days - while waiting for the next available to me Malta flight at 10pm that evening, which would not, however, in fact take off until midnight, and then discussed its main contents briefly with Joseph Ellul before breakfast in his home in Zurrieq that following Sunday morning, after walking there through that just-past-Full-Moon-night from the airport, and subsequently reviewed on the Internet - days, if not weeks before it was ever actually "published") Andrew Collins agrees with Plato (without, however, supplying his readers with any supporting photographic evidence whatsoever , and so without giving us any reason to reject the already available alternative evidence in favour of there being a near-Portugal sea-bed site corresponding in several important respects to Plato's quite specific description - let alone the even stronger evidence indicating that Sens in central France's stands on the site of the original capitol of Atlantis) that ancient Atlantis was originally ruled from an island-city outside the Pillars of Hercules and, indeed, very close to today's American mainland, very probably on or near the present island of Cuba.
Moreover, in a release dated "Havana, 14 May 2001" Reuters of London informed the world that Soviet-born ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky, the president of the Canadian-based company Advanced Digital Communications, had detected a sunken city in deep waters off the coast of the Cuban capital, Havana.
In 1929 Elena M. Whishaw had authoritatively suggested that the dolmens, temples and harbour works she had unearthed at Niebla in a part of Spain known to have been previously occupied by sea-faring Phoenicians included structures between 10,000 and 15,000 years old. When Columbus first set sail on his voyage of discovery he may very well have already been in possession of transatlantic maritime lore handed down from those far off times. Afro-Caribbeans resident on Tobago at the beginning of the twentieth century still told tales that seemed to echo the memory of the entire archipelago's having earlier been a much larger and more integrated land-mass, until it long ago fell victim to some almighty disaster of cosmic proportions. Many statements in the Indus Valley texts authoritatively corroborate such tales (cf. Kurt Schildmann, Als das Raumschiff "Athena" die Erde kippte - Indus-, Burrows-Cave- und Glozel-Texte entziffert (ISBN 3-933817-15-3, 1st edition: September 1999).
Dr. Alan H. Kelso de Montigny, who lived in Cuba and died in 1972, in "Did a Gigantic Meteorite, i.e., an Asteroid, fall into the Caribbean, and thus create the Lesser Antilles about 6000 years ago?" - an article he published in the International Anthropological and Linguistic Review (Vol.1, no.4, E. J. Brill, Leiden, Holland, 1954, pp.229-38), envisaged "terrible earthquakes… the day turned into a permanent night… a gigantic flood and a formidable rain that lasted many, many days", so that "the only people that were saved were those that succeeded in reaching mountain peaks and finding shelter there in caves."
Hydrographic charts of the ocean-floor east of Florida and north of Puerto Rico indicate the presence in deep water of two north-west to south-east oriented elliptical holes with a total area of about 77,000 square miles. Like the half a million or so similarly oriented "bays" or depressions in the earth spread over Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, and attributed by geologist William F. Prouty to powerful air shock-waves triggered by incoming meteors in about 9000 B.C., both holes call for an explanation… and suggest that Plato's own date for the destruction of Atlantis may be correct. In his article "The Ocean" (in Scientific American, no. 249, 1983, p.146) Wallace S. Broecker has, moreover, after examining sediment cores from a variety of deep-sea locations, agreed that asteroid or comet impacts may be responsible both for the sudden onset of ice-ages and for their at least relatively abrupt finish. (And cf. Cesare Emiliani, "Paleoclimatological Analysis of Late Quaternary Cores from the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico" in Science, Vol. 189, 26 September 1975, pp. 1,083-8.)
As Joseph S. Ellul states, mainly in the essay to which I have just referred you: "The dating of this catastrophe, caused by the collapse of the Gibraltar [land-bridge], is very important. There were several hypotheses until Carbon-14 was used, and we must hope that we are now near a proper date. When Fernand Navarra claimed to have brought bits of wood from Noah's Ark from Mount Ararat, the wood was Carbon-14 tested and dated as 5000 years old." [However, according to Andrew Collins, "in Kurdistan, Muslims, Jews and Christians all believe that Noah's Ark came to rest not on Mount Ararat, which they assert is a late invention, but on Al Judi, or Cudi Dag, a mountain located 104 kilometres south-east of Van."] When materials from Malta's Neolithic temples were Carbon-14 tested by Colin Renfrew, they were also, according to Dr. Tancred Gouder, curator of Malta's archæological remains, found to be 5000 years old. Many human and animal bones found inside the Neolithic temples, including a human skull at ĦaÄ¡ar Qim and others in the Hypogeum at Ħal Saflieni (in Paola) belong to the same era.
According to a documentary-presentation on Italian TV in January 1999 by a group of academic specialists using computer-modelled simulations to integrate data from seismic recordings with a variety of other detailed underwater research findings, today's island of Sardinia was in the remote past attached to mainland France, while Sicily was part of North Africa, but only a narrow North-South strip of mainland Italy was originally part of the land mass where Jugoslavia and Albania are now - much of modern Italy is the result of a series of volcanic eruptions that have extruded masses of material previously lying below the bottom of today's Adriatic Sea.
These findings are not incompatible with Joseph Ellul's conclusions which have already attracted the attention of researchers in several European countries whose own locally focussed and, therefore, different conclusions are entirely coherent with his own. Nevertheless, quite apart from the question of dates, is it reasonable to regard the collapse of the Gibraltar-straits land-bridge or high promontory-portal as the cause of the Great Flood, or was that collapse simply one of its earlier effects? What does the Bible actually say?
Although scholars are agreed that that account is very largely based on a number of earlier, longer and much more detailed texts, only some of which have survived, it is, nevertheless, long in comparison with the Bible's opening accounts of God's work of creation culminating in that of "the Adam", of his subseqent planting of "a garden in Eden, which is in the east", and of his transfer of man to this garden where "woman" was then fashioned to live with him in a naked state as "his wife". The biblical description of Eve, "the mother of all those who live"'s being "tempted" by "the snake", and of Yahweh's subsequently banishing both her and "the man become like one of us in knowing good from evil" from the garden in order to till the soil elsewhere is also considerable shorter than this account of the Universal Deluge. In such circumstances it would be less than wise to neglect Hamlet's Mill or to assume this to be the description of what was, in fact, no more than a local event!
In this connection Alexander Winslow's The Deluge - Its Cause and Effect (Torquay: Squires, 1998) deserves attention. Regarding C14-dating he remarks (p. 83): "Before the Deluge [which he believes was truly world-wide, dates to 2,345 B.C.], it seems highly probable that the ratio of ordinary carbon compared to radiocarbon in the atmosphere was far higher than now. This would be due solely to the global semi-tropical climate and the abundance of vast forests and all manner of thick foliage. Also, the shielding effects of the vapour canopy in conjunction with the fact that the 'sea basins' were much smaller than our great oceans today and surrounded by a great land mass, would have meant a significant reduction in the ratio of radiocarbon to ordinary carbon compared to that which we have today."
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6 Genesis 5:28-8:22. 7 Genesis 2:8. 8 Genesis 2:25. 9 Genesis 3:20. 10 Genesis 3:22.
Whatever one's personal beliefs about the veracity or otherwise of the Bible's account of events in the remote past, it is also important to recognize that, even though The New Jerusalem Bible's English text is agreed to represent a notable improvement on that of its immediate predecessor, The Jerusalem Bible (which more than once distorted the sense of La Bible de Jérusalem by which its editors claimed to have been principally guided in their own choice of alternative translations of the Hebrew and Greek originals on which each of these versions is said to be based), a careful reading of the first published French text of La Bible de Jérusalem rather suggests that its translations from the Hebrew were frequently composed in the light of Monsignor Peter Paul Saydon's (1895-1971) already existing and generally excellent Maltese version (newly issued - albeit not without a certain number of questionable changes introduced after his death - by Societas Doctrinæ Christianæ, M.U.S.E.U.M, Blata l-Bajda, Malta, 1995, with the Imprimatur of Archbishop Joseph Mercieca, President of the Maltese Episcopal Conference, although previously for pastoral reasons the liturgical use of a different, more recent and less accurate Maltese version of the Bible is said to have been de rigueur on all three Maltese islands), and while Maltese and Hebrew are importantly similar languages in many respects, no translation can ever be an adequate substitution for the original - which is why Professor Saydon, who valued Maltese as the non-missing vital link between the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth and the Latin language of both St. Jerome and today's Roman Catholic Church, devoted his entire life to translating the Bible as exactly as he did. First editions of his work, with his original maps are, therefore, still greatly to be preferred to more recent reprints.
Here is not the place to compare Sant's and Gibbons' Maltese Bibles or fully to discuss the difficulties involved in establishing the authentic original Hebrew and Greek texts of the various books today comprising the Jewish-Christian Bible. The now traditional use of points and other diacritical marks to indicate which vowels are supposed to accompany the originally vowel-free sequence of Hebrew letters, for instance, only came into use long after the death of Jesus and, indeed, well after the final destruction of Jerusalem's second Temple. Moreover, whether or not one agrees that 'divine inspiration’ always infallibly guides G-d's servants in their attempts to bring to life the otherwise dead bones of this voiceless though repetitive assembly of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, it is not to be overlooked that not only the present division of the text of each book into chapters and verses but even the insertion of clear spacings between individual words can seldom, if ever, be justified by appealing to the physical reality of any alleged still extant original…
Despite the plethora of these and a variety of other immense obstacles that challenge any human attempt to arrive at a reasonably credible interpretation of the originally inspired texts, throughout the centuries patiently dedicated and courageous scholars have achieved and continue to achieve many results well worthy of the modern reader's attention and respect. Now as ever, however, what are objectively speaking the most significant and important research findings seem to attract the least notice. Hence, elsewhere, although I have scarcely ever, if at all, brought to light anything at all that is 'new’, many details may strike even open-minded and truth-seeking readers as far-fetched, contrary to common sense, and even totally alien to everything they have hitherto regarded as obvious and certain.
Unless something like this is understood to be the case, it is, for instance, hard to see why Zecharia Sitchin's many outstanding published contributions to knowledge11 continue to be so widely ignored. Certainly all eight of his full-length books deserve to be not only read but attentively studied and meditated. Sitchin's interpretation of the biblical account of the Flood, as recorded in the above quoted chapters of Genesis, supposes that it "is but a short version of much longer and more detailed Sumerian and Akkadian texts that deal with this watershed event."12
"There was a time, the Sumerians told, when civilized Man was not yet on Earth, when animals were only wild and undomesticated and crops were not yet cultivated. At that long-ago time there arrived on Earth a group of fifty Anunnaki. Led by a leader whose name was E.A. (meaning 'whose home is water'), they journeyed from their home planet NIBIRU ('planet of crossing') and, reaching Earth, splashed down in the waters of the Persian Gulf. A text known to scholars as the 'myth' of Ea and the Earth, describes how that first group waded ashore, finding themselves in a marshland. Their first task was to drain the marshes, clear river channels, check out food sources (found to be fish and fowl). They then began to make bricks from the clay of the soil and established the first-ever settlement on Earth by extraterrestrials. They named the habitat ERIDU, which meant 'Home in the Faraway' or 'Home away from home'. That name is the origin of the name 'Earth' in some of the oldest languages. The time: 445,000 years ago…"
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11 ZECHARIA SITCHIN, The Earth Chronicle Series: I - The 12th Planet; II - The Stairway to Heaven; III - The Wars of Gods and Men; IV - The Lost Realms; V - When Time Began (New York, Avon Books 1978-1993 paperback; Santa Fe: Bear & Co. 1991-1994 hardback); VI - The Cosmic Code (Avon Books 1998); Genesis Revisited - Is Modern Science Catching Up With Ancient Knowledge? (Avon Books 1990; Bear & Co. 1991); Divine Encounters (Avon Books 1996).
12 The Cosmic Code, pp.53-54.
In time… Nibiru's ruler, AN ('The Heavenly One' - Anu in Akkadian) came to Earth to supervise the [by then] expanded presence and operations. He brought along with him two of his children: his son EN.LIL ('Lord of the Command'), a strict disciplinarian, to serve as Chief of Operations; and a daughter, NIN.MAH ('Mighty Lady'), Chief Medical Officer.
The division of duties between the pioneer Ea and the newly arrived Enlil proved tricky, and at a certain moment of impasse Anu was willing to stay on earth and let one of his sons act as viceroy on Nibiru. In the end the three drew lots. Anu returned to reign on Nibiru; Enlil's lot was to stay in the area of the original landing and expand it to an E.DIN ('Home of the Righteous Ones')… Ea's lot was to organize the mining operations in south-eastern Africa… To compensate him for the transfer he was given the title-name EN.KI - 'Lord of Earth'…
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