I’m no archeologist, watchmaker, engineer, or anything of the sort, but it occurs to me that the archeological context it was found in kind of points to the thing working as intended.

Metal and labor isn’t cheap, even less so in the ancient world, you’d probably be looking at a few hundred bucks at least to rebuild this mechanism between materials, design time, manufacturing time, etc. using modern tools and techniques.

If you’re some ancient Greek proto-watchmaker who’s just spent probably hundreds of man-hours working on this thing, cutting hundreds of gear teeth with hand files, fitting things together, engraving it etc. and it’s not working what are you going to do with it?

I know what I’d do, I’d either keep working on it until it does work, or I’d cut my losses, melt the damn thing down and turn it into something I can sell.

In either case it’s not leaving my workshop until it’s a finished product.

So unless it got looted after my town got sacked or something, which is a possibility of course, it’s probably not ending up on a ship to go somewhere unless it’s a working device. And since it was found on a shipwreck, that’s pretty telling to me.

Also it seems to have been built into a wooden frame. I’m not certain of the details of it’s construction, that could have been a structural piece that holds the whole thing together, but to me from the pictures I’ve seen of the device and attempts at reconstructing it’s it seems like a largely decorative element, probably the last thing I’d make for it after I’m done troubleshooting the mechanical issues. And if it was structural and the thing didn’t work I’d expect the thing to be more disassembled because the maker was still working on it.

Just my 2¢ on the matter.