What then was the purpose of this wonderful complex of rooms? Before attempting to answer this question we must consider what has been found in them. When the museum authorities first took over the hypogeum practically all the chambers were filled to within a short distance of their roofs with a mass of reddish soil, which proved to contain the remains of thousands of human skeletons. In other words, Halsaflieni was used as a burial place, though this may not have been its original purpose. The bones lay for the most part in disorder, and so thickly that in a space of about 4 cubic yards lay the remains of no less than 120 individuals. One skeleton, however, was found intact, lying on the right side in the crouched position, i.e. with arms and knees bent up. With the bones were found enormous quantities of pottery and other objects, buried with the dead as provision for the next world. The pottery is rough in comparison with the fine painted wares of Crete, but it is extremely varied in its decoration. One particularly fine bowl shows a series of animals which have been identified by Professor Tagliaferro as the long-horned buffalo, an animal which once existed on the northern coasts of Africa. Ornaments of all kinds were common, and include beads, pendants, and conical buttons of stone and shell. The most remarkable of all are a large number of model celts made of jadeite and other hard stones. These are of the same shape as the stone axes used by neolithic man, but they are far too small ever to have been used, and they must therefore have been models hung round the neck as amulets. Each is provided with a small hole for this purpose. The popularity of the axe-amulet makes it probable that the axe had some religious significance. Finally Halsaflieni has yielded several steatopygous figurines. Some of these resemble those of Hagiar Kim, but two are of rather different type. Each of these represents a female lying on a rather low couch. In the better preserved of the two she lies on her right side, her head on a small uncomfortable-looking pillow. The upper part of her body is naked, but from the waist downwards she is clad in a flounced skirt which reaches to the ankles. The other figurine is very similar, but the woman here is face downwards on the couch. The bodies themselves were so damaged with damp that only ten skulls could be saved whole. These, however, afford very valuable anthropological evidence. They have been carefully measured by Dr. Zammit, and they prove to belong to a long-headed (dolichocephalic) type usual among the neolithic races of the Mediterranean.