Zeugma– the Final Frontier, Part One

Last updated on: July 17, 2024 at 1:27 am by Ben Witherington

Zeugma– the Final Frontier, Part One 2024-07-02T10:06:47-04:00 Ben Witherington

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The word zeugma in common parlance means bridge, and in this case it refers to a frontier town built next to a crucial bridge across the Euphrates guarded by the Romans on the eastern frontier of the empire. Very few tour groups ever go to Zeugma itself, only to the Zeugma Museum on Gaziantep which is spectacular, and which we have done various blog posts on previously. But finally we went this time to the site itself. The backstory is important. The Turkish people appreciate the rich historical heritage of their land, and so when the Ataturk dams were being planned, and it became clear that the Zeugma site was going to be mostly covered with water, and eventually a lake, Turkish archaeologists with the help of archaeologists from other countries got busy, and removed massive amounts of mosaics from the villas of Roman social elites at the site. Not everything could be saved, and not everything that could be saved, as it turns out, was removed. Much to my surprise, there is a structure much like the slope house building put up by the Austrians at Ephesus, at Zeugma beneath which are the remains of numerous Roman condos. First a picture of the mighty Euphrates, the damming of which has turned a whole section of eastern Turkey into a place where myriads of olive, pistachio and other kinds of trees and crops can be grown through focused irrigation. There are some five dams now as part of the Ataturk system. First here is the Euphrates itself, and yes it is the same as the Biblical river of that name.

Down river from this shot is this current lake next to the Zeugma site.

There is good sign posting for this site, and at the place where the Roman villas have been excavated.

And there was nobody there but us, when we arrived, since it is off the usual tourist track, even for visitors to southeastern Turkey. This is not a minor site, but then there are hundreds and hundreds of sites of relevance to Biblical studies in Turkey, and it has taken me more than 20 year to visit most of them, summer by summer. Here is helpful schematic…

When we walked a bit around a few corners, we found this—

It’s huge!! So let’s explore it.

Here’s what the city of Zeugma would have originally amounted to….

Note the zeugma=bridge connecting the two parts of the city on either sides of the river. This was not a small Roman outpost. This was a considerable city. To give you an idea of the sort and length of Roman bridge we are talking about, I will take a slight left turn here and show you the one that is at Adana, since the bridge is no longer there at Zeugma.

In our next post we will unearth the remarkable villas found at Zeugma.

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July 18, 2024 Zeugma, the Final Frontier, Part Two

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