Tarxien Neolithic Temples, Tarxien, Malta

 The three temples at Tarxien are seperated yet attached with one another, and feature the most elaborately decorated sculpture of all the Maltese prehistoric temples

Most unique of these four temples, is the middle one, from aroud 3000BC, it has three pairs of apses instead of the usual two. A charcteristic of these temples are the intricate stonework, depicting domestic aniamls and spiral designes decorating the thick temple walls. Between the South and Central temples there is a beautiful relief showing a bull and a sow.This site was used extensively for rituals, which probably involved animal sacrifice, which explains why animal depciations were added.

Furthermore, the Tarxien temples provide a rare insight into how the megaliths were constructed: stone rollers were left outside the South temple. Additionally, there is also evidence of cremation at the center of the South temple, which is an indicator that the site was reused as a Bronze Age cremation cemetery.