The dark ages of ancient Greece only reached back to 1200 B.C. The first civilizations, first cities, in places like Sumer, only dated back to 4500 B.C. Akkadia had been settled around 2400 B.C., and Babylon, supposedly, 1900 B.C. Even Stonehenge, the closest megalithic monuments, at least in character, was thought to have been created in 2400 B.C.—which was still over a thousand years after some mysterious group had built the towering temples on the isolated island of Malta. There was no explanation for Malta’s megalithic structures; their history, and the history of the people who built them, had been lost to the ages.
Historians and archaeologists still debated the birthplace of civilization. Many argued that settlements had arisen in the Indus Valley of present-day India or the Yellow River Valley of present-day China, but the overwhelming consensus was that civilization, defined as functioning, permanent human settlements, had been founded around 4,500 years ago somewhere in the Levant or the wider region of the Fertile Crescent—thousands of miles from Malta.
Yet the remains of those primitive settlements in the Fertile Crescent were sparse and crumbling; a stark contrast to the undeniable, comparatively impressive, and technically advanced stone structures on Malta—which may have predated them. An isolated civilization had thrived here, had erected structures to some higher power, but had somehow vanished without a trace, leaving no history, save for the temples where they had worshiped.
The first settlers on Malta to leave a historical record were the Greeks, followed by the Phoenicians around 750 B.C. About three hundred years later, the Carthaginians succeeded the Phoenicians on Malta, but their reign was cut short with the arrival in 216 B.C. of the Romans, who conquered the islands in a few short years.
During the Roman rule of Malta, the governor had built his palace in Mdina. Almost a thousand years later, in 1091, the Normans had conquered Malta and altered the city of Mdina forever. The Nordic invaders had built defensive fortifications and a wide moat, separating Mdina from the nearest town—Rabat.
Perhaps the most enduring legend of Mdina, however, was that of St. Paul. In the year A.D. 60, the apostle Paul had lived there after having been shipwrecked on Malta. Some transformation had occurred during this time.
Paul had been on his way to Rome—against his will. The man that would later be declared an apostle was to be tried as a political rebel. Paul’s ship was caught in a violent storm and wrecked on the Maltese coast. All aboard swam safely to land, some two hundred seventy-five people in total.
Legend has it that the Maltese inhabitants took Paul and the other survivors in. According to St. Luke:
And later we learned that the island was called Malta.
And the people who lived there showed us great kindness,
and they made a fire and called us all to warm ourselves…
Luke’s testament relates that as the fire was lit, Paul was bitten by a poisonous snake but suffered no ill effects. The islanders took this as a sign that he was a special man.
According to tradition, the apostle took refuge in a cave in Rabat, opting to live a humble existence underground, refusing the comfortable surroundings offered to him.
During the winter, Publius, the Roman governor of Malta, invited Paul to his palace. While Paul was there, he cured Publius’s father of a serious illness. Publius is then said to have converted to Christianity and was made the first Bishop of Malta. In fact, Malta had been one of the first Roman colonies to convert to Christianity.
“Where should we land?” Kamau called over radio, interrupting David’s reverie.
“In the square,” David said.
“At the Church of St. Paul?”
“No. The catacombs are a little farther away. Put us down in the square. I’ll lead the way.”
He had to focus. Some mysterious group had settled Malta, and the world had fought over this tiny island for thousands of years since. Legends of miraculous healing, evidence of megalithic stone temples that predated civilizations around the world… and now something on Malta was saving refugees from the plague. How did it all fit together?
He turned to Kate as the helicopter landed.
“Can you walk?”
She nodded.
David thought she seemed… distant. Was she okay? He had the irresistible urge to put his arm around her, but she was already out of the helicopter, and the two scientists were shuffling out of their seats, following her.
Shaw and Kamau joined them.
“I assumed the catacombs would be under St. Paul’s Church,” Janus said.
“No,” David half-shouted over the dying roar of the helicopter behind them. He glanced over at St. Paul’s Church, the stone building that had been built in the seventeenth century atop the cave—now referred to as St. Paul’s Grotto—where the apostle had lived so simply.
As the group cleared the helicopter’s dying roar, David explained. “The catacombs are just ahead. For sanitary reasons, the Romans wouldn’t allow their citizens to bury their dead inside the city walls of the capital of Mdina. They built an extensive subterranean network of catacombs—burial chambers—here in Rabat, just beyond the city walls.” David wanted to add more—the historian in him could hardly resist. The catacombs in Rabat held the bodies of Christian, Pagan and Jewish bodies, laid side by side, like members of the same denomination, an act of religious tolerance almost unheard of in Roman times, where many officials routinely persecuted religious leaders.
At the same time that the families of Pagans, Jews, and Christians were laying their loved ones to rest in adjacent subterranean burial chambers in the catacombs of Roman Malta, a man named Saul of Tarsus, a Jew and a Roman citizen, was zealously persecuting the early followers of Jesus. Saul had violently tried to destroy the upstart Christian church in its infancy, but later converted to Christianity on his way to Damascus—after Jesus’s death on the cross. Saul of Tarsus would become known as the apostle Paul, and the catacombs in Rabat had been renamed in his honor.
David focused on the task at hand.
They ducked down another alley and he stopped at a stone building. The sign read:
MUSEUM DEPARTMENT
S. PAUL’S
CATACOMBS
Janus pushed the iron gate open, then the heavy wood door, and the group wandered into the museum’s lobby.
The large marble-floored room was quiet, eerily still. The walls were adorned with placards, photos, and paintings. Glass cases were filled with stone items, and smaller artifacts David couldn’t make out crowded several corridors off the main room. Yet all eyes focused on David.