Zeugma - The City of Mosaics

In 2014, news articles ran about 3 new mosaics found in the ancient city of Zeugma, however these mosaics were not all Zeugma had to offer. In fact, it has the largest mosaic museum in the world, with 170^2 feet of mosaics! It is an incredibly interesting archaeological site, especially if you are interested in mosaics as we are here, so I thought I'd do some research on it and share my findings with you guys here!

First of all, Zeugma is located in the Gaziantep province of Turkey, as shown on the map below:

It was part of both the Greek and Roman empires at different points during it's life span, being founded by one of the generals of Alexander the Great in 300 BC. In 64 BC the city was conquered by the Roman empire, when it likely gained the name Zeugma, meaning "bridge of boats", due to it having a pontoon of boats across the river Euphrates. It was during this time that it became wealthy, and that the mosaics we are interested in first started appearing, as it was along the Silk Road connecting Antioch to China.

However, what goes up must come down and in 256 it was invaded by the Sassanid king Shapur I. This was then followed by an earthquake which basically leveled those bits of the city still standing. Due to these twin calamities, the city never recovered it's previous status - which would later turn out to be a good thing! 

After the Roman empire split in two, Zeugma remained part of the Early Byzantium/Eastern Roman Empire, however due to ongoing Arab raids it was soon abandoned. It was resettled in the 10th and 12th centuries by a small Abbasid group. Finally, a small village named Belkis was settled in the 17th century, which remained standing until the 1990s, which is where the story really gets interesting.

Although Western scholars have known about Belkis for a good two centuries, and the Turkish locals even longer, it has received very little attention except from tomb raiders and looters, who carted off priceless mosaics and artefacts from the ruins. Below is a brief timeline of events that really plunged Zeugma into the limelight:

• 1987  - Gaziantep Museum excavate two tombs that have been broken into by looters, revealing statues and frescos. 
• 1992 - The watchman of the site reported renewed illegal activity, and a trench dug by antiquity hunters was found in the center of the city. This trench was continued by the Gaziantep Museum, uncovering a Roman villa with beautiful mosaic pavements such as the one below depicting the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne.
• 1996 - Construction of the Birecek Dam begins, revealing mosaic fragments. The museum was lucky enough to get the work halted while they rescued the mosaics, revealing a Roman Bathhouse, gymnasium and 36 mosaic panels. However work inevitable continued and threatened to flood the entire city. As such, frantic rescue excavations were carried out on the city before it was completely submerged. The site is divided into 3 zones: Zone A, to be submerged July 2000, Zone B, submerged October 2000, and Zone C, which luckily escapes being submerged and so work can continue indefinitely. 
• 1997 - A Bronze Age cemetery is found in the clay quarry area in front of the dam. There were 320 graves dating back to the early Bronze Age.
• Winter 1998-99 - Museum staff work throughout the winter, a bad time for archaeology as I'm sure you can imagine, in order to rescue the archaeology both from the impending threat of drowning and the constant threat of looting. They recovered the now famous "Gypsy girl" mosaic fragment as well as the Akratos Mosaic:
  
  
  
  
   
• 1999 - Two more mosaics are discovered, one showing Neptune, Oceanus and Thethys and one showing the Minos bull. The museum director decided to once again work through the winter, and uncovered a fountain with a statue of Apollo and another mosaic depicting Odysseus taking Achilles to Troy. 
  
  
  
  
• July 2000 - Zone A is submerged, and a larger focus is put on Zone B.
• October 2000- Zone B is submerged, and work moves to Zone C, where it continues to this day. 

The construction of the dam was done with the best of intentions  - to provide hydro electricity for the population and irrigation for the parched landscape. However, it ended up costing far more than the Turkish government initially realized in priceless archaeology damaged and possibly lost forever. It also submerged the local village of Belkis, which was rebuilt but still caused a lot of outrage. While we are lucky these priceless mosaics were able to be recovered, other sites are not so lucky, which paints a bleak picture for the future of the past.

Zeugma, submerged.