The whole of the southern half of the Mnaidra temple is surrounded by a
wall of huge rough blocks of stone, presenting a great contrast to the
dressed slabs of which the inner walls are formed. They are placed
alternately with their broad faces and their narrow edges outwards. The
roughness of this enclosure wall gives the structure a remarkably wild
and craggy appearance from a distance. The northern half of Mnaidra is
clearly a later addition.

There is no doubt as to the way in which the areas were roofed. In the
apse-like ends of the elliptical rooms the horizontal courses are
corbelled, i.e. each course projects slightly forward over the last.
Thus the space narrows as the walls rise, until the aperture is small
enough to be roofed by great slabs laid across. The corbelling of the
apse is just perceptible in Pl. III. Whether the roofing of the Mnaidra
temple was ever complete it is impossible to say: in any case the system
we have described could only be applied to the apsidal portions of the
areas, and their centres must either have been open to the sky or roofed
quite simply with slabs.


In the still more famous temple of Hagiar Kim we have a complicated
building, in which the original plan has been much altered and enlarged.
The main portion doubtless consisted originally of a curved façade and a
pair of elliptical areas, the inner of which has been fitted with a
second entrance to the north-west and completely remodelled at its
south-west end. Four elliptical chambers, one of which is at a much
higher level than the rest of the building, have been added. Here, too,
as at Mnaidra, we find niches containing trilithon tables. In the first
elliptical area, in which the apsidal ends are divided from the central
space by means of walls of vertical slabs, a remarkable group of objects