ZEUGMA, Turkey –– Inch by inch, the rising waters of the newly dammed Euphrates River have been swallowing this ancient city of the Roman Empire: the 2,000-year-old public piazzas, the lavish villas with their exquisite mosaic tile floors, the still-undiscovered buildings with unknown treasurers.
For four months, nearly 200 archaeologists worked frenetically to record and save artifacts from one of the best-preserved Roman cities ever uncovered. Last month, the race ended, with the waters of an artificial lake lapping at the last visible remnants of ancient stonework.
Cupids, dolphins, and sea serpents are common themes for mosaics particularly in this part of Turkey. This mosiac was discovered August 18, 2000.
(Oxford Archaeological Unit)
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The archaeologists rescued 10 complete mosaics depicting scenes from mythology and literature, the largest collection of Roman government seals--more than 50,000--ever found at a single site, bronze statues of Venus and nearly 2,000 other antiquities.
"The degree of preservation and quality of the artifacts we're uncovering could be compared to Pompeii," said Robert Early, senior project manager for the British-based Oxford Archaeological Unit, which specializes in salvaging endangered ancient sites.
Now the water has submerged a third of Zeugma, including buildings and artifacts archaeologists simply ran out of time to explore and others that they preserved in mortar and sand to be rediscovered if ever the dam is taken out of service.
The race to explore and preserve Zeugma--once a wealthy trading city and military post on the Silk Road, ancient Rome's route to China--is part of a broader struggle between Turkey's drive to modernize its economy and scholars' efforts to save rare treasures from 10,000 years of history here in the ancient region of Mesopotamia.
To provide electricity to its energy-starved cities and irrigate a broad swath of the arid, impoverished southeast, the Turkish government is building a network of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric plants and canals, at a cost of about $34 billion, across the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys. But the dams of the Southeast Anatolia Project will inundate hundreds of ancient archaeological sites, only a few dozen of which researchers say they have any hope of salvaging from the reservoir waters. In the areas that will be submerged by just the next two dams built, archaeologists say they have identified 250 significant sites, only 30 of which are scheduled to be surveyed or partially excavated.
"As a result of modernization, archaeological evidence is being destroyed in an irreversible way," said Numan Tuna, a Turkish professor involved in surveying the newly threatened sites. "Culture needs to be protected. For many of our sites, it is already too late."
Of all the threatened historical sites, none has attracted more international attention than Zeugma, a city that disappeared 800 years ago.
Archaeologists say the intact mosaics found here, which adorned the floors of reception rooms and hallways in the city's most opulent villas, are some of the best finds of their kind from Roman days. One shows the sea god Poseidon perched in a golden chariot drawn by a pair of silver horses.
Although archaeologists--and thieves--slowly chipped away at Zeugma's mysteries for nearly four decades, it was not until June that scientists began racing the rise of a 17-square-mile lake behind the Birecik dam, a half-mile away. With only four months remaining before the lake would claim Zeugma, the California-based Packard Humanities Institute offered $5 million to finance an emergency rescue effort.
"Normally excavations are planned years in advance and take years to complete," said David W. Packard, president of the institute. "This was compressed into a very brief period, with an extremely intense rush of activity."
Archaeologists estimate they accomplished in four months here what usually would take about 10 years. Even so, they excavated only the one-third of Zeugma to be submerged. No funds are available to explore the rest of the city.
Archaeologists used satellite imagery, ground-piercing radar and computer enhancements to divide the threatened portion of the city into zones for triage excavations by international teams.
"The days of an archaeologist scraping and brushing things to see what you can find are over," said Early of the Oxford Archaeological Unit, which has worked around the world helping to salvage ancient ruins from destruction by highways, airports and other public projects.
Archaeologists were amazed by what they discovered beneath 15 feet of khaki-colored soil and orchards of leathery-leaved pistachio trees. Zeugma contained more extraordinary relics and was far better preserved than had been believed.
"This site is special because of the level of preservation" and the scale of the find, said Early. "This was about an entire city, not rooms in a house. We have a representative sample of the city of Zeugma from evolution to decline."
Whether it was destroyed by earthquake or invasion--archaeologists and historians cannot yet say--Zeugma remained relatively untouched by later civilizations. The last of its estimated 50,000 inhabitants disappeared so quickly that archaeologists have discovered expertly crafted figurines of copper alloys, coin-filled leather purses and a gold ring for sealing official documents--all items that normally would have been pilfered from such a site centuries ago.
Those artifacts will give historians extraordinarily detailed insights into the way the early Romans lived, worked and played. Already, archaeologists have examined the remains of what they ate--olive pits, lentils and wheat grains--and glimpsed the lifestyles of the wealthy traders and military commanders who resided in the city's poshest suburbs.
Last month, with the waters encroaching, Early's teams filled in their excavation trenches, coating pillars and stonework in lime-based mortar and stuffing archways and town houses with layers of sand and pebbles to preserve them underwater, in hopes that if the lake's level is ever lowered, future generations can re-excavate the ruins. Previous excavations by other teams remain open, their pillars now barely visible above the water line.
Meanwhile, Turkish officials, criticized for their project's destruction of archaeological ruins, say history may actually benefit from emergency rescue efforts such as Zeugma. "These are the lucky areas," said Mumtaz Turfan, deputy director of the State Hydraulic Works. "Others may wait another 1,000 years for excavation."
