page_title: Byzantine Malta
section_title: Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Byzantine Malta / Culture
caption_attribution_description: Fragments of a 10th century Otranto type amphora, found in Ħal Safi, Malta.
context_page_description: Malta was ruled by the Byzantine Empire, from the time of the Byzantine conquest of Sicily in 535-6 to 869-870, when the islands were occupied by Arabs. Evidence for the three centuries of Byzantine rule in Malta is very limited, and at times ambiguous. Historians theorise that Byzantine Malta was exposed to the same phenomena affecting the Central Mediterranean, namely a considerable influx of Greek settlers and Hellenic culture, administrative changes brought about by the reorganisation of Sicily along the lines of a Byzantine theme, and significant naval activity in the Mediterranean following the rise of Islam.
  Byzantine sources are scant on the Maltese islands, although a handful of records group them together as the nominal Gaudomelete, a term that first appears in the pseudoepigraphical Acts of Peter and Paul. The islands were a place of relegation and exile. With Muslim expansion in North Africa, Malta shifted from a military base and trade post linking Sicily and the other Byzantine possessions in the Italian peninsula to the Exarchate of Africa, to an outlying satellite and guardpost of Byzantine Sicily.
context_section_description: The architectural and artistic style prevalent in Malta was not that of Constantinople proper but rather the Byzantine styles of Sicily. Pottery has been discovered with distinctively Otranto-type amphorae markers, that further testify to the close ties between Malta and Southern Italy. The number of Greek inscriptions found in Malta and Gozo lead historians to believe that a degree of Hellenisation occurred, in a similar manner to the process seen in Sicily. The inscriptions, and the catacombs in which they were mostly found, usually date from the third to the fifth century.
  The basilica at Tas-Silġ was expanded, modified and reutilised to include a fortified settlement linked with Marsaxlokk harbour  below. Ceramic remains from Tas-Silġ span from the sixth to the ninth century, evidence that the harbour and settlement had links over centuries with various parts of the Mediterranean. This is also confirmed by finds of a spatheion amphora in Grand Harbour, and late Roman amphorae in Marsascala, and other remains at Ta' Xbiex, Manoel Island, Sliema creek and Mistra Bay. The quantity of remains leads historians to infer widespread use of Maltese harbours during the Byzantine era. 
  In 1768, 260 late Roman North African amphorae were found stacked in a chamber of the Kortin warehouses, twenty four of which had graffiti of a religious nature on them. Given the distance from the main town, historians assume that these warehouse facilities were used for redistribution towards other harbours in the Central Mediterranean. Large quantities of Byzantine era pottery were also found at the Kortin promontory in Marsa, with traces of a fire leading excavators to assume that the buildings and the quay were abandoned in late eight or early ninth century, with the date established due to the presence of globular amphorae on site. The presence of earlier ceramics at the same level may indicate an earlier abandoning. 
  Warehouses in the inner harbour at Marsa were abandoned earlier than those in Kortin, due to silting, with no evidence of use found by the fifth or sixth century. Due to the silting, the main maritime activity probably concentrated on the Kortin area, a hypothesis which is confirmed by a number of later burial sites.
  Other burial remains linked with the Byzantine era are a number of catacombs, including St. Paul's catacombs, the Abbatija Tad-Dejr hypogeal complex, and Tal-Barrani.
caption: Fragments of a 10th century Otranto-type amphora, found in Ħal Safi, Malta. Such pottery finds confirm continued trade links with Byzantine Southern Italy well into the Arab period.
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