Those in favor of the proposal say that the Ministry of Environment is better equipped to handle bureaucratic red tape. The major snarl here is that the state owes the people five billion drachmas in back debts for compensation in land that has been expropriated for preservation. It is also argued that in the case of protecting urban habitats, planners and architects have more know-how than archaeologists.
Those opposing the proposal claim that the custodianship of the nation’s heritage will be taken out of the hands of specialists and placed in those of non-specialists: engineers and city planners who often look on the past as simply an obstacle to the future. That Melina Mercouri’s Ministry of Culture is dragging its feet and that Antonis Tritsis’ Ministry of Environment is streamlined and efficient is belied by ongoing works, such as in Rethymnon and the Metropolitan Cathedral Square in Athens – programs that were quickly endorsed by the former ministry and held up for a prolonged period by the latter. It was only natural that the Archaeological Service should turn thumbs down on an underground garage next to the Cathedral where there are proto geometric tombs, and should investigate the land at Spata before the bulldozers moved in for the proposed international airport, where, in fact, an important cemetery of the classical period was brought to light.
The main argument against the proposal, however, concerns the effective survival of the Archaeological Service itself. The steady decline of this once highly respected organization over the last twenty years is cause for concern. The Ministry of Environment is in its infancy, that of Culture is not even ten years old, but the Archaeological Service has been in existence for a century and a half: a dedicated group of scientists, restorers, analysts, chemists, artists and historians whose expertise is built on a solid foundation of long experience and rich tradition.
The early history of the Service and the contributions of its forgotten heroes has been recently recalled by Athina Kaloyeropoulou in Kathimerini. Its origins date back to the 1820s when the president of the provisional government John Capodistria brought the scholar Andreas Moustoxidis over from Italy to form a museum in Aegina when it was the country’s capital. This he filled with antiquities he gathered off the fields and under the bushes of the Peloponnesus . In 1833, during King Otto’s regency, the Archaeological Service was formally founded by Kyriakos Pittakis who, as a boy, darted amongst the bullets during the Seige of the Acropolis saving what antiquities he could and, as a young man, sniffed’out ancient sites with the help of a map drawn from the descriptions of Pausanias. There was the ephor Ludwig Ross who explored mainland Greece; Stamatakis, of whose family and place of birth nothing is known, but who worked for years at Mycenae, tubercular and penniless; Verdelis, who died with his boots on in a corridor of the Propylaea; Platon, who reburied Minoan artifacts in the garden of the Iraklion Museum to escape the grasp of the Nazis. This organization, which more than any other has brought the past back to life and light, has itself a past which is worthy of respect. Today, Melina Mercouri and Antonis Tritsis are sparring over the Archaeological Service much as Athena and Poseidon did when they quarreled over the possession of the Acropolis centuries ago. It is hoped that, like the gods, they will come to a creative settlement.
Or better still, on the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Athens as the capital of Greece this coming October, it would be fitting if President Karamanlis, himself an ardent follower of archaeological excavations, proposed that the Archaeological Service be raised to ministerial status with its own team of planners, engineers and architects working with the specialists. This would leave Tritsis free to look to the nefos and Melina to her beloved ‘cultural events’.
Arabic states have given ministerial status to their underground treasures. Hasn’t Greece all the more reason to do likewise in honor of a treasure which is the energy source of the civilization of the Western world?
