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Careful observations on
the facades of the temples revealed that the main
trilithon doorways stand slightly forward of the rest of
the façade. The small model of a temple found at Ta’
Hagrat, as well as the fragmented one found at Tarxien,
also share this characteristic. Apparently, the protruding
edge of the doorway may have been intended to be a
prominent feature of the façade. Could this mean that the
doorway was the ‘foundation’ of the whole structure?
But how did our ancestors derive the shape of such
doorways, and where was the starting point?
Various
possibilities were investigated. First, the possibility
that all three megaliths were of the same length was
tested. This gave negative results. Another hypothesis
that was tested was that the height of the doorway was
equal to its width, including the uprights. It was
establishe that this was not the case. Even the idea of
the ‘megalithic yard’ was tried, but with no success.
A possible idea of how our temple builders planned and
started the construction began to materialise after
considering several measurements of the doorway.
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