Mystery Tal-Qadi Stone could be the oldest representation of the zodiac ever discovered

A German academic believes he has solved one of Malta’s enduring archaeological enigmas and intends to sail the Mediterranean on a replica Bronze Age vessel to prove it. The Tal-Qadi Stone, discovered at the temple complex of the same name in Salina and exhibited at the National Museum of Archaeology, in Valletta, is a book-sized limestone slab, divided into five segments and incised with figures of stars and what has usually been thought of as a crescent moon. Most archaeologists believe the stone, probably a fragment of a larger whole, was a star map or moon calendar but its exact purpose remains a mystery. Kai Helge Wirth, a geographer and art scientist who has been researching the stone for some four years, believes he has cracked the mystery. The stone, he says, was an ancient navigational tool, a map not only of the stars but of water currents in the Mediterranean. Illuminated from the right angle, he suggests, the moon figure on the stone reveals itself to be not a moon at all but a boat: a “proto-Phoenician bird-bark”. The stars are the constellations Scorpio, Virgo and Leo. They correspond directly to the early Phoenician shipping routes. “The stone says: ‘This is our...