Triton Fountain

Ibrahim and Marica are visiting the Triton Fountain, an important modernistic landmark of Valletta.

Triton is a mythological Greek God and the messenger of the sea that now for many years has been guarding the entrance to the historic capital city of Malta. Triton is a mythological Greek God, the messenger of the sea. He is usually represented as a merman which has the upper body of a human and a tail.

The Greek Mythology and the Argonauts places the home of Triton on the coast of Libya. The Argonauts were a band of heroes in Greek mythology. They sailed with their vessel Argo around the Mediterranean sea to find the Golden Fleece. When the ship of Argo was driven ashore in the Gulf of Syrtes Minor, the crew carried the vessel to the “Tritonian Lake”, Lake Tritonis, whence Triton, the local deity euhemeristically rationalized by Diodorus Siculus as “then ruler over Libya”, welcomed them with a guest-gift of a clod of earth and guided them through the lake’s marshy outlet back to the Mediterranean. When the Argonauts were lost in the desert, he guided them to find the passage from the river back to the sea.

To be continued.

By Mohamed Ibrahim with Marica Lewis