Ħaġar Qim
Watercolour
and crayon
©2023
Charlene Brown
I plan to organize the chapters in the series ‘Time Travel with a bag of crayons’ in chronological order, so Ħaġar Qim, which dates from 3200 BCE, may be the first archaeological site in the book. Ħaġar Qim, meaning ‘standing stones’ is a megalithic temple complex located on a plateau near the south coast of Malta.
(Full
disclosure) The tiny island of Filfla, seen off the coast, doesn’t line up with
the ‘trefoil’ arrangement of the elongated oval chambers of the temple quite as picturesquely
I’ve shown it. And the stone frieze of domestic animals anchoring the base of
the painting was actually sketched in the Tarxien temple complex, about 10 km
northeast of Ħaġar Qim, when my sister and I were there in 1999.
