A honey-named city-state has been inhabited since 6500 BC
Malta, a central Mediterranean republic of Malta and Gozo, lies between Sicily’s southern approaches, Tunisia’s east, and Libya’s north. Official languages are Maltese and English, and most people also know Italian. It ranks tenth-smallest by area and ninth-densest among the world’s countries, forming one continuous urban sprawl around Valletta.
Valletta is the capital of a country so built-up that it is often treated as one city. About two-thirds of Maltese speak or know Italian, a sign of long ties with Sicily. Catholicism is the state faith, though the constitution protects religious freedom, and tourism drives a high-income economy. Independence arrived in 1964, the republic in 1974, EU membership in 2004 and the euro in 2008.
The Latin Melita comes from Greek Melítē, which may mean place of honey, perhaps after a native bee subspecies; a rival theory traces it to Phoenician Maleth, a haven, for the Grand Harbour. Hunter-gatherers from Sicily arrived between 8000 and 6500 BC, with farmers following by about 5400 BC. Around 3500 BC islanders raised the Ġgantija temples on Gozo, older than Egypt’s pyramids, along with Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra. After 2500 BC the islands emptied for decades before Bronze Age newcomers who cremated their dead and built dolmens.
Phoenicians settled after 1000 BC, governing from Mdina, and Carthage took over in 332 BC. Rome seized the islands in 218 BC, yet the last local coins still bore Greek writing and Punic motifs. Vandals, Ostrogoths and then Belisarius’s Byzantines followed, until Arab invaders in 870 left the place nearly empty; resettlement from Sicily came in 1048–1049. Roger I of Sicily’s Normans arrived in 1091, and Frederick II ordered the remaining Muslims out or converted in 1249.
Aragon’s royal house ruled from 1282 to 1409. On 23 March 1530 Charles V handed the islands to the Knights Hospitaller, lately expelled from Rhodes, for a yearly tribute of one falcon. Under Jean Parisot de Valette they beat off the Ottoman siege of 1565, then built Valletta and held power until 1798. Britain later based its Mediterranean Fleet here, and the Axis besieged it in World War II.
Source: Malta
