Malta’s Cultural Heritage has been profoundly influenced by various others. A number of powerful nations have successively laid claim on our island for centuries at a time. A measure of their respective cultures have become part of our heritage which today is European in scope and Maltese in identity. As Malta’s national institution for Cultural Heritage, we feel proud to have contributed to this project. A number of distinctive items have been carefully selected from our national collection, rethought, and then reproposed in this attempt to showcase Malta as a Land of Sea. The narrative assumes a novel approach but the selected items, in themselves, are central to a good understanding of our island’s history through the ages. Indeed they have to be viewed and appreciated against the backdrop of an even wider context that forms the structural backbone of our nation’s identity. In their own particular way, these unique objects, when correctly interpreted and put into context, establish a number of defining moments which mark our nation’s progressive development. They help us in understanding who we really are, where our origins lie, and what are the distinctive characteristics of our identity. In proposing Malta as a Land of Sea, we have endeavoured to release a measure of the thousands of years old spirit of an island that has witnessed and experienced all the major ebbs and flows of the troubled history of the Mediterranean Sea. The spirit of things is significantly richer and more eloquent than their physical and apparent aspect even when they are imperfect or incomplete. Cultural Heritage in its own right has rightly been regarded as a desired common good – a guiding light which breathes new life and leads successive generations towards a new and even richer living spiritual environment. The past slowly filters down to the present. And we grow on the roots of our memory. Artes Serviunt Vitae – Sapientia Imperat Seneca, Epis. Ad Lucillium, 85, 32
JOSEPH M. BUTTIGIEG Chairman, Heritage Malta
16 MALTA. LAND OF SEA