pits occur elsewhere at Halsaflieni.

In two of the largest chambers in the hypogeum the roof and walls are
still decorated with designs in red paint. The patterns consist of
graceful combinations of curved lines and spirals. Many other rooms,
including the circular chamber, were originally painted with designs in
red, which have now almost wholly disappeared.

Many of the chambers are extremely small, too small for an adult even to
stand upright in them, and their entrances are merely windows, perhaps
a foot square and well above the ground.

What then was the purpose of this wonderful complex of rooms? Before
attempting to answer this question we must consider what has been found
in them. When the museum authorities first took over the hypogeum
practically all the chambers were filled to within a short distance of
their roofs with a mass of reddish soil, which proved to contain the
remains of thousands of human skeletons. In other words, Halsaflieni was
used as a burial place, though this may not have been its original
purpose. The bones lay for the most part in disorder, and so thickly
that in a space of about 4 cubic yards lay the remains of no less than
120 individuals. One skeleton, however, was found intact, lying on the
right side in the crouched position, i.e. with arms and knees bent up.

With the bones were found enormous quantities of pottery and other
objects, buried with the dead as provision for the next world. The
pottery is rough in comparison with the fine painted wares of Crete, but
it is extremely varied in its decoration. One particularly fine bowl
shows a series of animals which have been identified by Professor
Tagliaferro as the long-horned buffalo, an animal which once existed on
the northern coasts of Africa. Ornaments of all kinds were common, and
include beads, pendants, and conical buttons of stone and shell. The
most remarkable of all are a large number of model celts made of
jadeite and other hard stones. These are of the same shape as the stone
axes used by neolithic man, but they are far too small ever to have been
used, and they must therefore have been models hung round the neck as
amulets. Each is provided with a small hole for this purpose. The
popularity of the axe-amulet makes it probable that the axe had some
religious significance.

Finally Halsaflieni has yielded several steatopygous figurines. Some of
these resemble those of Hagiar Kim, but two are of rather different
typ