Eraclea Minoa (Agrigento), illegal excavations discovered. And it is not the first time

In Heraclea Minoa, in the province of Agrigento, there must be a great treasure, a treasure buried somewhere in what is now the Valley of the Temples Archaeological Park, or in its immediate vicinity, because in recent days illegal excavations have again been reported, and in recent years this has been repeated cyclically and with the same modus operandi: in 2019 in July and August the first and closest illegal excavations discovered by officials of the Valley of the Temples Park to which the Heraclea Minoa site belongs. Complaint snapped immediately to the Carabinieri without any indication of whether indeed the grave robbers had plundered the site or whether the excavations had been unsuccessful.

Another report to the Carabinieri in December 2020: the grave robbers were back in action after more than a year again making many holes in the ground thus suggesting more hands of grave robbers in action looking for artifacts or something else that they evidently might have found or exactly the opposite, that they kept looking because they had not yet found what they were looking for. There is perhaps someone in Agrigento who knows the story better than most, who knows that it is worth risking a lawsuit to dig because there is evidently something to be discovered. What? It is not known, but given the insistence there is evidently more to Heraclea Minoa than just a few dwelling walls and the Hellenic theater so far unearthed. Indeed, in 2021 the grave-diggers are hard at work: in February a hundred holes between 10 and 30 centimeters in diameter are unearthed, in May another 40 holes, and in October again a hundred excavations in various parts of the area and in adjacent lands. After so much work in 2022 they rest, or at least no activities are reported, and today they are back to striking: on Easter Eve another 30 holes and excavations found throughout the area.

The question that arises is whether they actually find something every time or not. And in case they did find it how come the archaeologists had not found it? Perhaps, on the flip side, in no case do they manage to find anything of interest, and so they come back hoping it will be the right time, but does such insistence make sense without a clue that something important under the ground should be there? This is a mystery that the Carabinieri will have to unravel, what is certain is that even now the findings made by the Ministry are very important since the amphitheater theater articulated on sloping terraces dated between the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. was discovered in 1950. The theater was included within the city whose walls, some 6 km long, were found running along the entire plateau to the Platani River, a stone’s throw from the sea. Several houses were also brought to light, of which the so-called House B exceptionally preserves the walls.

The ancient city of Heraclea Minoa has origins that go back to the ancient myth of Minos’ expedition to Sicily on the trail of Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth, who escaped in flight on wax wings with his son Icarus. Diodorus recounts the Cretan king’s tragic end at the hands of Kokalos lord of the Sicans, with whom Daedalus had taken refuge. The fleeing companions of Minos would found the city of Minoa.

Now the Archaeological Park of the Valley of the Temples is gearing up to install a video surveillance system, but certainly it is unlikely to be a single person acting stealthily: the dozens of holes and digs each time, which are discovered, are too many to have been made by a single person at night. And each time it happens, nothing is missing from the inventory of Park material already surveyed. They look for ’more’. Either they find something each time and then return (with excavations of various kinds from small ones to large ones more or less deep), but it is not clear why then in so many years all this material has not been unearthed by Ministry officials, or they find nothing and return to search.

Pictured is the Heraclea Minoa site. Photo: José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro

Eraclea Minoa (Agrigento), illegal excavations discovered. And it is not the first time

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