Glenn Maffia

IT has been well over a decade the archaeological team, under the supervision of Professor Helga Bumke, has been uncovering the impressive finds within the vicinity of the Temple but more significantly continuing ‘site management’ of the archaeological treasure.

Their record has been mightily impressive, even if some years have gone by without the ‘headline’ discoveries. I do hope their funding, which is up for review in 2021, continues.

The value of maintenance

The ‘site management’ facet, of course, is the continued care and attention afforded to this impressive cultural statement to our collective human past.

Its maintenance remains an imperative function of their annual itinerary. I, for one, certainly noticed a particular decline in the state of the site when, due to political squabbling, their presence was curtailed one year.

That merely goes to show the continued and frequent maintenance of the Temple is a chore of the utmost gravity if Didim is to keep and preserve its iconic emblem.

Admittedly it is not exactly an exciting activity, though nonetheless a silently crucial one which needs to be fulfilled with that love, care and gentle affection which garners the necessities that produce this stunning vista of delight to our eyes.

The archaeological team’s professionalism and dedication are impeccably faultless.

Their intellectualism a cultural legacy of European endeavour to conserve and sustain our past for the future generations that shall follow us.

That linear procession is the most invaluable bequest we can gift future generations of, hopefully, inquisitive minds filled with enlightened compassion.

Nature unimpeded

Though nature has its inexorable role to play in this theatre of ever constant drama, hence a shift in the earth’s structure when the tectonic plates awake and yawn and stretch the very ‘solid’ ground we walk upon, can be a fatal lament to an impending auspice of finality.

Hence the concern over the subtle but steady inundation which threatens the archaic terrace wall facing the Temple’s main façade.

I am still awaiting the final results of the analysis of the water sample taken by the archaeologists, which shall confirm this liquid intrusion is of a naturally occurring origin.

If it is not then one can only deduce this is potentially human neglect, and one cannot miss the virulent neglect.

I have heard on countless occasions the locals, who wake up each day to this superb apparition (thus rendering eyes blind?), describe the Temple as “a load of old stones”. Well, I personally, see this structure as an exquisite exultation of diaphanous grace and eloquent elegance. Which one lacks poetry? Which one lacks education?

Educated or bucolic

The locals need to change their mindset of seeing the Temple merely as a tourist trap from which to ensnare foreigners money.

And where precisely are those guardian souls, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism?

Entwined within the dichotomy of not knowing whether to be either ‘culture’ or ‘tourism’ once again? Jobs-worth bureaucrats trained to make sound-bite noises.

It is about time these people awake from their slumber for the threat is not merely the reopening of the watercourse flowing into the southeast section of Apollo’s precinct, but the manifestly obvious desire, to turn this entire archaeological site into a pastiche ‘Greek village’.

What an absolute dereliction of duty to humankind, and a blatant revelation of that most basic of desires, to make money quickly.

Therefore, we have upon our table either rampant capitalism or educated consideration. On the flip of a coin, which shall Ataturk’s head fall upon?