So apparently they are doing major reconstruction works on the railway running through the Athenian agora. I always found that an awkward railway anyway, but it has been there for some 100 years already, and, if you think about it, it competes in bizarreness with the 1950s reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalos directly next to it: the Athenian agora deserves a chapter in the handbook of archaeological surrealism anyway, and, at least, the rescue excavations carried out after spectacular discoveries during the railway construction, produced a lot of useful data about this incredibly important site, which was the social, economic and ideological heart of Athens throughout antiquity.
The tragic thing that happens when you turn a stone in this area is that you find something. So the wisest thing the Railway company could have done is to work on the surface or within the layers postdating the 1890s railway construction. But guess what? They didn’t. They removed a stone or two, found three sherds and a block of marble, and hell broke loose: it is total war on the Agora. Stressed out Athenian Archaeologists frantically demand unlimited time (oh, and, by the way, money) for excavation, as the poor construction workers happen to have hit what apparently is thought to be ‘The Altar of the Twelve Gods‘, which immediately has been declared by a leading expert to be the ‘Most Important Athenian Monument Discovered Of The Last Century’. Thucydides himself says it, so it must be true. Equally stressed out Construction Workers obviously have slightly different priorities – time is running out, wages need to be paid, and hey, there was barely enough money to complete the project had there been no delays, so let’s move on.
It does not often take too long before echoes of such conflicts end up in my mailbox – usually in the form of a petition, which gives you a good feeling, pacifies conscience, and usually is of no avail anyway, so it doesn’t matter whether you sign it or not. The easiest way, of course, is to give your sympathy to the archaeologist: after all, we all share a concern for the preservation of our heritage, and we all know how wrong things sometimes can go, with monuments shovelled away to make space for Human Progress or, worse, Political Prestige. The difficulty is that it is often so hard to understand the backgrounds of what is happening. There are no pictures of this excavation, but it can’t be that big. Will the monument be buried and safe, or will it need to be destroyed? As the first seems to be the case, I am VERY happy to keep it unstudied underground, as a ‘known unknown’: it is safer there than out in the open, especially given the current (and future) budget of the Athenian archaeological service. How urgent are the ‘burning questions’ that haunt archaeologists? I am not that convinced, actually. How about the rest of the agora, then? Are we sure we fully understand that? Without being a specialist on that specific site, I wouldn’t count on it. Or is this all perhaps just a bit of a political battle about the last of the quickly drying up financial resources? That might be too cynical, I don’t know enough of it to claim this – but I wouldn’t exclude the possibility altogether.
Anyway. I’m not convinced. So sorry, no, this time, I am not going to sign the petition, unless somebody gives me a very convincing argument to do so. It is a pity that there is no time and money, of course, but everyday life has its priorities too, and is the small step forward for a few specialists enough to justify the months and months of delays and frustration of thousands of Athenians? It would, perhaps, if the monument would need to be destroyed, but as this is not the case, I opt for modesty – there is enough material, in Athens and elsewhere, that can easily be studied but hasn’t been studied yet. Let’s do that work first. Once we will be ready with that, in fifty years time (or more), the Athens – Piraeus Railway surely will be in desperate need for another major renovation again.
Miko Flohr, 01/03/2011