Zeugma

Feel the ground first. It is pale, dusty limestone, warm even in the morning, and it slopes gently down toward a wide sheet of green water. Above you, a modern roof throws a long band of shade across a floor that is not modern at all. Small stones, thousands of them, set edge to edge in patterns of red, black and cream. You are standing on the floor of a house where people lived nearly two thousand years ago.

This is Zeugma, an ancient city on the western bank of the Euphrates River, a short drive from Nizip in southeastern Turkey. The river below you is one of the great rivers of the ancient world. It runs south toward Syria and Iraq, toward the lands once called Mesopotamia, the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates. For centuries, this exact stretch of bank was one of the few places where armies, merchants and caravans could cross.

The city began with a different name. Around 300 BCE, Seleucus the First, one of the generals who divided Alexander the Great's empire after his death, founded a settlement here. He called it Seleucia on the Euphrates, after himself. On the far bank stood a twin town, Apamea, named after his wife. Two cities, one river, and between them... a crossing.

That crossing gave the place its later and lasting name. Zeugma is a Greek word that means a yoke, a joining, or a bridge. Ancient writers describe a bridge of boats here, a line of vessels tied together so that people and animals could walk across the current. When Rome took control of the region in the first century before Christ, the name Zeugma stayed. The city had become, quite literally, the bridge.

Under Rome, Zeugma grew rich. It sat on the empire's eastern frontier, facing the rival Parthian Empire across the river. A Roman legion, the Fourth Scythian Legion, was stationed in the area, and soldiers bring money, trade and building work. Wealthy families built large villas on the terraces that climb up from the water. They decorated them with wall paintings, fountains, and above all — mosaics.

Here is the first thing many visitors miss. The mosaics were not museum pieces to the people who made them. They were floors. People walked on them barefoot, children played on them, servants carried water across them. Look closely and you may see small repairs, places where tiles were replaced long ago by someone who simply wanted the floor to look right again. These were homes, cared for and lived in.

The subjects on these floors come mostly from Greek mythology. Gods, heroes, river spirits, the Muses who inspire poets and musicians. A Roman visitor would have recognised every scene, the way we recognise characters from a famous film. Notice how the artists used tiny stones to make shading on faces and folds in clothing. From a short distance, the tiles blend together and the figures seem almost painted.

The good life here did not last forever. In the middle of the third century after Christ, around 253, the Sasanian Persian king Shapur the First attacked the eastern Roman provinces, and Zeugma was sacked. Archaeologists have found burned layers and collapsed buildings from this time. Some houses seem to have been abandoned suddenly. The city survived in a smaller form for some time afterward, but its golden period was over.

Now the second surprise. For most of the twentieth century, much of Zeugma lay under farmland and the village of Belkıs, known mainly to local people and to looters. Then, in the late 1990s, the Birecik Dam was being built downstream. Its reservoir was going to flood the lower part of the ancient city. That green water you can see is the result. Large parts of Zeugma now lie beneath it.

The threat of the rising water started a race. Turkish and international archaeologists carried out urgent rescue excavations, lifting mosaics and wall paintings before the water arrived. Newspapers around the world followed the story. Many of the finest pieces were taken to the city of Gaziantep, where the Zeugma Mosaic Museum now displays them. The most famous is a portrait of a young woman with wide, watchful eyes, known as the Gypsy Girl.

Archaeologists also found something less colourful but very revealing — a great many small clay seal impressions, called bullae. In the ancient world, people closed documents with clay stamped by a seal. The papyrus or parchment documents burned or decayed long ago, but the fired clay survived. These little stamps suggest that Zeugma kept a large official archive, a sign of how much business passed through this river crossing.

What you see on site today is the upper part of the city, the part above the water line. The houses are protected by modern roofs and walkways, so you can look down into rooms, courtyards and corridors without stepping on the floors. Take your time here. Follow the line of a wall to find where a doorway once stood. Look for the channels that carried water, and for the different floor levels that show how the terraces climbed the slope.

Before you leave, walk to a point where you can see the reservoir again. Listen for a moment. Perhaps there is wind in the dry grass, or the sound of a boat engine somewhere out on the water. Somewhere beneath that surface lie streets, houses and floors that no one will walk on again. And here, under this roof, a family's floor still holds its colours in the shade, close to the river crossing that gave this city its name.