Josephine was in her 80s when I met her, still sprightly and sharp. She had always been interested in learning as much she could about everything around her, and archaeology was just one of the subjects she had adopted.

She learnt in a way most of us would envy: through none other than experts Sir Temi Zammit and Lord Strickland.

When she was younger, she would go with them on their “digs”.

Perhaps because she was there when Malta’s substantial heritage was literally being unearthed in the second decade of this century, she gained a deep respect for the civilisations of the past which had so painstakingly created these monuments to their beliefs.

One of her favourites was Ħaġar Qim. She was at that time still involved in various groups who met there to pray. Perhaps it was this respect which made her the logical choice when someone from the past wanted to make contact…

Many years before, she had gone down to Ħaġar Qim with her son and his British wife. The couple wandered down to Mnajdra, but Josephine preferred to wait for them at the top, having visited the site quite often. The place was quiet, deserted and she decided to sit down in the shade.

She was at first quite surprised when a man appeared by her, as she had not seen anyone else around, but she was even more taken aback when he addressed her by name.

Sitting next to her, the man said: “I’ve come to see you, to ask you a favour.”

She looked at him. He was neatly dressed in a pale blue silk shirt with dark trousers and she noticed that he was wearing a skull cap. He had a neatly trimmed, pointed beard and although he looked slightly foreign, he spoke impeccable English.

“I understand that you are a friend of the prime minister, Dom Mintoff,” the man said.

“Yes,” she said, again surprised at his knowledge of her.

He paused slightly.

“We need to talk to him, to ask him not to hold any more shows here at Ħaġar Qim.”

A few events had been in fact been held there, with multicoloured lights, dancers and pop songs. Ħaġar Qim was truly a marvellous, dramatic setting for it but it had crossed her mind more than once before that it might be sacrilegious to hold such events at places of worship, no matter how ancient.

Who was this man, though, and why was it his concern? She felt it was only her right to ask.

“I am a Jew, a rabbi,” he said.

“Very well,” she said, after only the slightest hesitation. “I will call Mr Mintoff tomorrow to pass on your request but first you must tell me where you have come from and how you know my name.”

We chose one of the highest spots, to keep it safe from any floods

“I come from the ancient Jews,” he explained. “We are distressed to see all these things going on here. For us, this is a very holy place. We are the sons of Abraham. When we were taken to Egypt, half of us escaped and took to the sea. We took with us whatever scrolls we had, our families, slaves and tools. We needed to find a place to build our temples, which would not be destroyed.

“Malta was the ideal place, although it was different in those days. It was still well-forested with ficus trees. There were only a few goat herds living here.

“We chose one of the highest spots, to keep it safe from any floods. This is why we survived the Great Flood which cut Malta off from the mainland.”

“But who do you believe in,” she asked.

“The one true God,” he replied, without hesitation.

Josephine paused, taking in all this man was telling her and trying to relate it to what she already knew about that period of history. One question sprung to mind: “But why did you leave here?”

The man looked at her and smiled slightly.

“We didn’t. We stayed in Malta. We are your ancestors.”

Josephine looked at the man’s foreign yet familiar face. Perhaps this ancestry explained the Maltese talent for business and music. But she did not have much more time to wonder.

The man stood up to leave. They shook hands politely.

“Whenever you need help,” he told her, “come and pray here.”

And he walked away.

Was he a messenger from the past? It was not the first time that Josephine had sensed an inexplicable atmosphere at the site. Long before she had met this strange man, Josephine remembered some soldiers who used to be billeted near Ħaġar Qim confiding that they used to hear singing there, decades before. Perhaps this ancient people still worshipped there, in the dead of night.

In any case, she did call her friend Mr Mintoff.

“Yes,” he recalled, when I spoke to him. “She told me that she had met someone from Israel who asked for the temple to be kept sacred. She did not say that he was a ghost at the time,” he added, with a little laugh. “I don’t believe in these things.”

There were many protests about the damage to Ħaġar Qim by the ballets and TV shows and they were eventually stopped. Was it because of the message passed on to the prime minister?

Dom Mintoff would not say, adding that there were many reasons behind the decision to halt performances. But he still remembers Josephine’s plea on behalf of the Jew…

Most archaeologists date Ħaġar Qim to around 5,000 years ago, around the time of the legend of the great flood which filled the Mediterranean basin.

Around 3,000BC, the flood – possibly Noah’s in the bible – was supposed to have buried the Mediterranean basin under several hundred feet of seawater. But other theories exist about Ħaġar Qim.

In his book Malta’s Predeluvian Culture, author Joseph S. Ellul explains that he is a descendant of a farmer who worked the lands that virtually covered Ħaġar Qim at the time of their first excavation in the 19th century. His father was put in charge of the excavation of the temple by Sir Temi Zammit.

Ellul disagrees with Sir Temi’s dating of the temples, however. He is convinced that the temples are pre-deluvian and gives as proof erosion data, corroborated by a University of London professor of archaeology who visited the site in the 1950s.

This, he claims, would date the earliest construction on the site to 10,000BC, making the temple complex one of the oldest in the Mediterranean.

There are other many aspects of the Jew’s story which do not tally with known facts. The temple was, both in shape and artefacts, linked to the fertility goddess. There was certainly no evidence of the Jewish faith.

This is the 40th in a series of short stories The Sunday Times of Malta is running every Sunday. It is taken from The Unexplained Plus (Allied Publications) by Vanessa Macdonald. The first edition was published in 2001 and reprinted twice. It was republished, with added stories, as The Unexplained Plus. The Maltese version of the book, Ta’ Barra Minn Hawn (Klabb Kotba Maltin), is available from all leading bookstores and stationers and from www.bdlbooks.com.