78 i Flora Unveiled
of Kore/ Persephone and Demeter, for it was the eating of a pomegranate seed that doomed
Kore to live part of the year underground. Kore/ Persephone, of course, embodies the fertil-
ity of the soil and, in a broader sense, the agricultural cycle and the duality of life and death.
In one of the pits of the Hypogeum^22 a stunning clay statuette of a sleeping woman was found,
one of several similar figurines found on the second level (Figure 4.7B). She has been interpreted
as representing regeneration and healing, but it is likely she is also connected with agriculture in
some way, especially since it is thought that the third level of the Hypogeum may have been used
to store grain.^23 Perhaps she is the embodiment of the dormant grain that “sleeps” in the earth
during the winter and “awakens” in the spring. Once again, we see possible parallels with the
Kore/ Persephone myths of Crete and Greece. Such an interpretation would be consistent with
the cereal grain motif at the base of the monumental Tarxien Temple “goddess.”
Having begun the transition to agriculture relatively late compared to the Levant,
the Neolithic people of Malta were contemporary with the Bronze Age societies of
Mesopotamia, and, like them, they incorporated trees such as the pomegranate into their
iconography. This is especially evident at the “temple” of Haqar Qim, situated on a hill over-
looking the southern coast of the island. Here, a freestanding limestone altar with potted
trees carved on its sides was placed within the main entrance to the “temple” (Figure 4.8A).
Figure 4.6 Lower half of a monumental statue of a woman, 2 meters high, located in the
vestibule of the Tarxien temple complex in Malta, dating to 3000 bce. The arrow points to a relief
of cereal grains at the base of the statue.
From Biaggi, C. (1994), Habitations of the Great Goddess. Knowledge Ideas & Trends; the original stone
sculpture is housed in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, Malta.