Free 02 _ Maltese Goddess, The by Lyn Hamilton Page A

water, telephones, television, computers. You must also forget all you know about the world around us: what causes the rain to fall, lightning to strike, the wind to howl, a bright orb to rise in the sky and then disappear into darkness, plants to grow, and most especially, for a child to be born and for people to die.
    “Imagine yourself a fisherman, perhaps, or a sailor, setting out from your shelter in a cave or a mud-brick hut on the island we now call Sicily, to cast your nets on the sea, or ply your trade along the coast.
    “As your small craft nears these islands, you catch your breath in amazement and perhaps in fear. For rising from this rocky terrain you see huge structures that you can scarcely believe are made by human hands, bigger and higher than anything you have seen before, maybe thirty feet or more in height, towering from the cliffs above you.
    “‘You may wonder who built them, or even how they were constructed. But you do not ask yourself what they are used for, or to whom they are dedicated. Because when you and your ancestors before you try to explain the unexplainable, when you turn to a deity for succor, inspiration, or an explanation of the mysteries of nature around you, the god you turn to is female. She is the Great Goddess, giver of life, wielder of death, and for at least twenty-five thousand years and arguably much, much longer, She has provided the focus for human existence.”’
    The speaker’s name was Anna Stanhope, Dr. Anna Stanhope, Sophia and Anthony had told me. Principal of a posh English girls’ school, she had taken a sabbatical to come to Malta to study the Neolithic Age on the islands. While here, she had taken it upon herself to enlighten Maltese students as to their own history, and had taken a part-time teaching assignment at the school Sophia attended. As she spoke, I sat in the darkness and tried to concentrate on her words.
    But it was difficult work trying to keep my mind off the unsettling journey I’d taken to get here. Try as I might, I could not keep from thinking about the incident with the Great White Hunter, a man I’d regarded as something of a buffoon when I first laid eyes on him on the plane. Now his ridiculous outfit and pretensions of grandeur had taken on a more sinister cast. Could it have been he who killed the cat and tampered with the brakes? Did he know where I was staying? Had he followed me home from the airport? That seemed a ridiculous idea, and anyway, he’d been in no shape to do much of anything, and he’d been delayed in customs.
    Furthermore, it couldn’t have been he who killed the cat. I’d seen him several times in Valletta, and I didn’t think he’d have had time to get to the house ahead of us. Did that mean he had an accomplice? The hooded man at the back of the yard?
    The more I thought about it, the more difficult it was to assume that it was a coincidence that our paths had crossed so often. Could I recall seeing anyone else from the airplane since we’d landed? GWH’s original seatmate, his “lovely lady,” for example? The priest? My own seatmate, an executive with Renault, I think he’d said. No, not one of them. Only the Great White Hunter. Why? I told myself to stop thinking about it. I was driving myself crazy.
    “Twenty-five thousand years! Since the end of the last great Ice Age! Not one of the great religions of today can claim a fraction of that! From the steppes of Russia, through the caves of France, all through what we now call Europe and beyond, humankind worshipped the Goddess. How do we know? For one reason, for every phallic symbol or male statue we find in these times, we find many, many more triangles or female statues. All over the ancient world, people buried their dead with tiny statues of the Goddess, they dyed the bones with ochre, the color of blood, symbol of life and of the Great Goddess.
    “It is here in Malta that Her worship reached its peak, its most creative expression. Here the Goddess