A City at the Edge of an Empire
On the banks of the Euphrates River, the ancient city of Zeugma was an important crossroads for the Roman Empire. Founded around 300 BCE by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, it was originally named Seleucia. After the Romans conquered the city in 64 BCE, they renamed it Zeugma, meaning "bridge" or "crossing," for the pontoon bridge that connected the western bank to the city of Apamea on the eastern side.
Zeugma's strategic position made it the last stop in the Greco-Roman world before entering the Persian Empire. It became a major military and commercial hub, housing Roman legions and was a collection point for road tolls. At its zenith, the city's population reached up to 80,000 inhabitants, making it one of the largest cities of its time. Wealthy Roman officers, officials, and merchants built luxurious villas on the slopes overlooking the river, decorating their homes with intricate and colored floor mosaics depicting scenes from Greco-Roman mythology.
The Race Against the Water
In 2000, this archaeological treasure was threatened. The construction of the Birecik Dam, part of a large hydroelectric project, meant that the rising waters of the Euphrates would soon submerge about 30% of the ancient city. An urgent, large-scale rescue excavation began, turning into a race against a relentlessly rising water level, which increased by an average of four inches per day.
An international team of archaeologists, funded by organizations like the Packard Humanities Institute, worked under intense pressure. The primary scientific challenge was to remove the vast and delicate mosaics before they were lost forever. Traditional methods of lifting mosaics are slow. The urgency at Zeugma forced the development and application of new, faster techniques for detaching, lifting, and conserving the ancient artworks. Conservators used modern adhesives and backing materials to lift large sections of mosaic flooring, which were then transported for restoration. The emergency effort successfully saved nearly 2,500 square meters of mosaics, along with 140 square meters of frescoes and numerous other artifacts. These rapid detachment methods pioneered at Zeugma are now part of the standard toolkit for salvage archaeology projects worldwide.
The rescued treasures are now housed in the Gaziantep Zeugma Mosaic Museum, which opened in 2011. It is the largest mosaic museum in the world, displaying over 2,448 square meters of Zeugma's stunningly preserved art.