Zeugma in the 1990s (ZAP I)

Update (15.5.00)

There has been a tragedy and a second is in progress.

Location of Zeugma - Samosata lies 75 km away to the north-east.

First the tragedy. A decade ago the waters building up behind the massive wall of the Atatürk Dam on the Euphrates in Turkey began to flood the streets of the little deserted village of Samsat. A disaster for the poor villagers who had been expropriated and obliged to leave ancestral homes in the interest of a greater and wider good.

More important, the flood waters were lapping over the fields beneath which lay the remains of the ancient city of Samosata. The city had been the capital of allied kings of the Roman Empire one of whom, Antiochus IV, was described as a man "who had inherited great wealth and was the richest client-king of all" (Tacitus Hist 2.81.1). In the first century AD, the kingdom was annexed by Rome to the province of Syria, the city flourished as a frontier town of the Roman Empire, and an entire legion of 5000 soldiers was placed there. Written sources provided occasional insights at various points during its subsequent history but the flesh for these bones was to be found within the town wall circuit of 5 km enclosing some 250 ha/ 600 acres, and beyond it in the remains of the ancient villages, farms, aqueducts, quarries and roads of its hinterland.

A number of Turkish and foreign teams did carry out surveys and excavations, but for so large an area it was modest. None of the foreign institutes undertook any major project at Samosata itself which was left to the valiant but limited resources of Turkish archaeologists. Today it is all under a deep and vast lake - readers might look at the superb aerial view by Ed Kashi of the lake where once it stood (National Geographic May 1993) - and if, a century hence, the dam were to be drained the traces of what was once one of the handful of second rank cities of the Roman Empire will have been further eroded and contaminated by not only the decades of waterlogging but now a vast accumulation of silt too.

Nothing more can be done about Samosata but something could yet be done about Zeugma.

During several centuries of first Greek then Roman rule, Zeugma was the location of the first and only permanent bridge over the Euphrates between the Taurus Mts and Babylonia several hundred kilometres away. That in itself made the twin cities of Seleucia and Apamea at either end of the bridge of signal importance.

The majestic view from Belkis Tepe over Seleucia (under the pistaccio trees) and Apamea on the far bank. In the lower centre can be seen the outline of the buried theatre identified by Algaze's survey. To its right probably lay the agora. The hills around were covered with houses and the legionary fortress may have been on the left centre.

In the first century BC it too passed under Roman rule and received a legion in garrison. There were only eight legions in all of Rome's Asian provinces between the Black Sea and the Red and two of them were located at Samosata and Zeugma within 70 km of one another, an indicator of the military significance of these places. For several centuries Zeugma ("the bridge", or, as we might call it, Bridgetown), as the twin towns came to be known, flourished as a fortress city, urban centre, trade centre, garrison, nodal point of several key routes, and meeting point of East and West. Here more than anywhere the Roman and Parthian Empires met. Here too the Semitic cultures of Syria mingled with those of Iran and Anatolia.

The existence of ruins of the Classical period around the little Turcoman village of Belkis upstream from the modern bridge of Birecik has been known to western scholars for over two centuries. By the beginning of this century growing awareness of the extent of the remains indicated a major city but there was no consensus as to which since many scholars believed the ancient bridge had lain at Birecik. Since the 1970s, however, it has been indisputable that the ruins at Belkis and opposite, around Tilmusa on the other bank, had to be those of Zeugma, a town at least as large as Samosata, twice the size of Roman London and three and half times that of Pompeii.

In the 19th century looters carried off superb mosaics and works of art fine enough to be covetted by the world class museums of imperial Britain, France, Germany and Russia. The potential of the site was revealed further by the systematic recording of visible features in the 1970s by Jörg Wagner. And now looters have again been at work, this time leading to the accidental discovery of a well-preserved villa with not just stunning mosaics but with glass and bronze household items still scattered across the floors from when the building was burned. In a western country it would have attracted TV cameras and large funds. Turkey, however, is like as a vast outdoor museum and, although it attracted media attention, not least through the efforts of Mrs Ayfer Ünsal of the Gaziantep newspaper, it has received less than its due and the implications have been given inadequate international concern. Turkey, nothwithstanding its strong antiquities legislation and vigorous archaeologists, lacks the resources to meet all of the many daily threats to its material heritage.

More alarming still, however, the Turkish government is building yet another dam to provide water for irrigation as part of its vast South-east Anatolia Development Project to revitalise the region. The dam is to be called the Birecik Dam but it is located at Zeugma, 500 m downstream of the city, and is now in progress. When it is complete all of Apamea on the east bank and half of Seleucia on the west, as well as scores of other sites of every period further up the valley will have disappeared under a new lake. Worse still, because the dam is so close to the site, it will suffer not just from emboldened looters and the effects of water and silt but from the construction work itself as access roads for plant are driven through and material is carried away for building.

The extent of Seleucia and Apamea and the region to be flooded.

There is no secret about this dam. The American archaeologist Guillermo Algaze included it in the non-intensive survey he made over the land to be flooded by five such dams. More recently and much to his credit Rifat Ergeç of the Gaziantep Museum stretched his slim budget to rescue the villa being looted by treasure hunters. But there has been no major fieldwork project. I undertook a brief preliminary season in 1993 and there are at present limited projects being carried out by Catherine Abadie-Reynal of the French Institute in Istanbul and some further rescue excavation by the Gaziantep Museum.

A superb mosaic floor in a wealthy villa overlooking the river. The central panel has been looted - probably this century - but may now have been located in a private collection. The walls of a neighbouring villa, when the field soil had been stripped, still stood 4 m high in places and contained even more such fine mosaics (see Kennedy 1994).

Major fieldwork seems unlikely. After more than two years I had to admit defeat; publicity brought numerous offers of physical assistance by people from a score of countries. Major institutional funds were not forthcoming, however, and none of the businesses approached was willing to offer support. A little further work may well take place as construction inadevertently discloses new long-buried features. The dam, however, is scheduled for completion in 1998 but may be a little later - millenial. There is - just - still time for a major programmeof fieldwork but none is likely.

Samosata - and presumably now Zeugma - seem victims of two trends in Classical Archaeology. First the continued excavation, decade after decade at a handful of major city sites which are under no threat but absorb substantial resources. Classical archaeology has been criticised for devoting its energies for so long overwhelmingly to the towns and to the monumental buildings at that. The reaction to this may be behind the second trend, the recent focus instead on the countryside of the Graeco-Roman world and the unfashionableness of city excavation amongst younger Classical archaeologists.

In 50 years our successors, with different philosophies and objectives, will be aghast that we allowed either of these cities to be inundated without major efforts at investigation. Everything in archaeology may be significant but not everything is of equal significance. This is not a matter of exposing yet more theatres or temples; either would be interesting (after two centuries of visits the theatre at Zeugma has only recently been identified by Algaze's survey) and valuable (where are the pagan shrines and Christian churches of Zeugma?) but could certainly add greatly to what we already know about both types of structure from the Classical of a Gerasa to the Syrian versions of a Dura Europus. Zeugma, however, holds part of the key to several major questions which should have drawn the attention of many different and overlapping groups of scholars. A few will illustrate the point:

• Hundreds of scholars specialising in Roman military studies have for years lamented our appalling ignorance of the entire Near East. Roman military structures of the 1-2nd c. AD are virtually unknown and not a single one of the handful of early imperial legionary fortresses has ever been excavated. Even the precise locations of those at Samosata and Zeugma are unknown or uncertain and nothing is known of their character.

Bronze scale armour uncovered by a bulldozer improving a track across the site. Material like this is rare from anywhere in the Roman Empire.

Examples of this sort could be multiplied: personally I would be enormously interested in the rural economy, the water supply of Seleucia, the impact of a generation of Commagenian rule, analysis of skeletal evidence from the poorer and as yet undiscovered cemeteries, the character of manufacture at the town, the interaction of cultures, and the processes of development and decline, .......

These and many other questions could transform Zeugma into the late 20th century counterpart of the remarkable discoveries at Dura Europus in the 1920s and 30s. But applying now the techniques and approaches of a rather different subject. The opportunity is still there but rapidly narrowing.

Postscript.Since writing the above two years ago, Catherine Abadie-Reynal has cxontinued her work at Zeugma and, since 1997, been joined by a team from the University of Bern under Professor Michael A. Speidel. Now, too, my own work at the site has been published together with related essays (Kennedy 1998).

This rutted Roman road - discovered by Dr Christopher Lightfoot - runs up the side of a steep hill upstream of Zeugma to one of several Roman quarries in the region. The rock face on the left has a graffito in Greek letters.

Reading

Coin struck by the city of Zeugma in the mid-3rd c. AD. It depicts what is probably the temple on the acropolis (Belkis Tepe - see photograph above) within which can be seen the cult statue of the Tyche of the city. In front is a colonnaded precinct, entered through a monumental gate. The features inside may be the trees of a sacred grove. Today the summit of the hill has only the shattered foundations of the temple visible and several cisterns. The text reads:"Of the People of Zeugma".The Capricorn below is the zodiacal sign of the Emperor Augustus and may also have been that of the Legion IIII Scythica stationed at Zeugma.

David Kennedy, M205, Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Perth, WA 6009, AUSTRALIA Contact: Work phone: (0)8-6488-2150; fax: (0)8-6488-1009; e-mail: dkennedy@cyllene.uwa.edu.au