When burnt oil was thrown at the Bombi gate, all those who wanted to be seen and heard jumped onto the outrage bandwagon, shouting “X’gharukaza!”, and behaving as though this was the greatest calamity of the past 10 years. Stiffer penalties were called for, promises were made to hound the barbarians who did it, and every organisation, association and quango said – sorry, “stated’ – its two cents’ worth. Even the government had something to say about a bit of burnt oil thrown at this blessed gate; you’d think somebody had placed a bomb in the centre of Hagar Qim and detonated it. The oil was cleaned up, and not a trace of it remains.

This is further proof – as though we needed any – that our priorities are thoroughly skewed. For look what’s happening now, and nobody except one archaeologist and the founder of the Malta Archaeological Society has said a word. The quangos and mumbo-jumbos are silent, the associations are looking elsewhere and probably do not even realise what’s going on, the ‘Indignant from St Julian’s’ letter-writers are not writing to the editor (sorry, ‘putting pen to paper’), and the government – well, here’s the rub – the government is doing it. So, in case you missed the fuss, which is understandable because there wasn’t any, I’ll tell you what this is all about.

Marsa has always been the main port of the Maltese Islands. This is clearly indicated in its name, which in Maltese is preceded by the definite article. What we think of as a place-name – il-marsa – literally means ‘the port’ in Arabic. Because it was and still is the main port, it had no qualifier, like Marsaxlokk (Arabic for ‘southern port’), Marsamxett (‘the wintering port’), or Marsascala (a very interesting one – the name indicates that the place was already known by the Greek word for port or bay, ‘skala’, but that the meaning of ‘skala’ was lost to the inhabitants at the point where they began calling it Marsascala, which effectively means ‘port-bay’ or ‘port-port’). Sicily, with its virtually identical heritage, has similar port-names, like Marzamemi and Marsala.

Because the history of Malta is linked inextricably to its ports, what lies beneath the years of accumulated dirt and silt at Marsa tells a good part of the story of ancient Malta, in the same way that Ostia is crucial to the telling of the story of ancient Rome. As with Ostia, the main port of ancient Rome which is now far inland, the old port of Malta was not at today’s water’s edge, but quite a way in, where trucks now drive past and factories are built. Many centuries of silt and the reclamation of marshy land have pushed out the shoreline and buried the old port remains. The same thing happened at Burmarrad and at Marsascala. What lies beneath that silt, those roads and buildings, is a tantalising mystery – not so mysterious, perhaps, because archaeologists have a pretty good idea, given that there are discoveries and indications from time to time.

Now, the agents of government are ripping through the ground at Marsa to extend a storm-water canal. While doing so, they have uncovered substantial remains of the Roman period, walls built of large blocks of stone, ceramic material including Roman amphorae, tableware, fine ware, and fragments of large storage jars. Work has continued despite the discoveries, apparently without permission from the heritage authorities and from MEPA, which even the government requires. Mechanical diggers and bulldozers have been laying waste remains of huge archaeological importance, which have lain protected by the alluvial sediment for two thousand years. This is State-sponsored barbarity, beside which the throwing of burnt oil at the Bombi gate fades to the insignificance of a prank.

The remains that the government JCBs are whizzing through with thoughtless philistinism, while the government concerns itself with the more important matter of entrenching the prohibition of abortion into the Constitution, are those of horrea, which were vast warehouses used for the storage of goods in transit. The Roman warehouse complex was spread over the entire Marsa floodplain area – this is indicated by remains that have been unearthed over the years in different places – and was much larger than warranted by the relatively tiny population of the islands. The maritime archaeologist Timmy Gambin, who specialises in the topography of ancient ports, says that the extensive remains “strongly suggest that the port at Marsa not only served local needs, but also those of Roman ships and traders operating throughout the Mediterranean, when Malta was very much part of the connectivity in the Roman world”. In other words, it was the original precursor of today’s Freeport.

Because even the shortest journey was so difficult in those days, the people who worked in the Roman port at Marsa lived near it. They were merchants, shipwrights, sail-makers, stevedores, rope-makers, chandlers, potters who made storage jars, and all the ancillary traders who in turn serviced the population of this town: bakers, millers, butchers, grocers, weavers, shoemakers, and so on, including the inevitable prostitutes.

Today’s prostitution at Albertown is merely the extension of a truly ancient practice in that precise location. No remains have been discovered of the houses in which these people lived, for reasons that include dismantling for re-use of the building blocks, and destruction through re-building (these would have been very small structures), but considerable evidence has been found in the form of numerous burials.

The only people who appear to be horrified at what is going on at Marsa are the archaeologists. Compare this muted reaction with the hysteria that followed the burnt oil thrown at the gate, and you will have a graphic illustration of the research results that were announced last week: that the Maltese are the least educated people in the European Union. Burnt oil is thrown at a stone archway of little historical importance and no artistic value and everyone bounces up and down in indignation and outrage, purely on the basis that the gate is old and they can see it everyday while driving in and out of Valletta. Meanwhile, Roman port remains that are of certain significance to the record of the Roman mercantile archaeology of the Mediterranean, are bulldozed and JCB-ed by the Maltese government, and people keep quiet because their lack of education (in the proper sense of the word) renders them unaware of the serious nature of this destruction.

Echoing in my mind, as I write this, are the words of a Maltese man who was in my mixed group of visitors to the world-famous site of Carthage. As the Italians and the French stood in awed silence, conjuring up the horrific devastation still evident in the blackened stones – the murder of the entire population, the burning of the city of Hannibal, and the queen walking into the flames with her children, after expressing scorn and contempt for her capitulating husband – all you could hear was a gruff voice saying, for the amusement of the snickering Maltese: “X’gibhuna naghmlu hawn – biex inharsa lejn kocc gebel?” They were nothing but blackened stones to him because he had absolutely no idea of where he was. In his profound ignorance, he spoke for virtually the whole of Malta. Despite knowing that the Phoenicians were somehow linked with this island, not a single one of my Maltese companions in that group had any idea how Carthage had met its end, or how that end, at the hands of the Romans, is the reason why there are now Roman remains for the agents of government to bulldoze at Marsa.