Zeugma, Commagene
37.05861111111137.865833333333Koordinaten: 37 ° 3 ' 31 " N, 37 ° 51' 57" E
Zeugma (Greek: Ζεύγμα [ " Bridge City" ] ) is an ancient city in Eastern Turkey on the Euphrates. On the other bank of the river level in Seleucia Seleucia Apamea or lay on the Euphrates. Zeugma is located in modern day Turkey near the village of Belkis at Belkis Dagi near Birecik in the district of the province of Gaziantep Nizip. Because of his pontoon bridge, the double city was an important stage on the Silk Road. In October 2000, the ancient city was flooded by a Turkish dam project in the Southeast Anatolia Project to a large extent.
History
Zeugma was founded by Seleucus I Nicator in the place where he built the first bridge over the Euphrates, in the 3rd century BC. The city developed into a major commercial and administrative center. In its heyday, lived around 70,000 people in the protected by a Roman legion town. 252 AD, it was destroyed by the Sassanids, but rebuilt. Later, the city was probably destroyed by an earthquake, a part of the mountain slope slid into the center of the residential area and buried it under itself. The underlying houses are particularly well preserved. A man-sized sewer line from calibrated stone blocks to the back river, which was still in the discovery in perfect condition, caused a rapid drainage for daily needs and for large rains.
Research
Since the 19th century necropolis and Roman mosaic floors were found during excavations in the vicinity Zeugmas exposed, among other things, today can be seen in the museums of Berlin and St. Petersburg. From 1980 it was known that the CAP authority was planning a dam at Birecik. In 1989, Guillermo Algaze of the University of Chicago, a field study in the region, made it learned of the dam planning and this made the public aware of any foreign institution or university to Zeugma was interested. The director of the museum in Gaziantep, Rifat Ergec and his assistant Mehmet Önal, alerted again in 1994, the international archaeologists shaft and gave both the onset sporadic rescue excavations known, also received some support from the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Due to lack of funds the archaeological institutions and the Turkish Ministry of Culture could no systematic excavation finance. In 1995, the French Foreign Ministry stepped in and promoted the French archaeologist Catherine Abadie - Reynal with her staff at the Turkish rescue excavations until 1999.
In 2000, the ruins Zeugmas were flooded by the Birecik Dam. On 7 May 2000 six months before the flooding, read the American patron David W. Packard in the New York Times of Zeugma and decided spontaneously to support a rescue excavation. He commissioned immediately an English company, the Oxford Archaeological Unit ( OAU) under the direction of Robert Earley, Italian mosaic specialists and a French team to the rescue of the most precious artifacts. Under high pressure 60 archaeologists, 200 workers and three new excavators worked thanks a budget of five million dollars. Alone in the emergency excavation from June to October 2000, she found 45 mosaics, 22 of which almost intact.
Even before the scheduled flooding, which was further delayed by President Sezer to 10 days, it was called now sunken Zeugma also the "second Pompeii ". The mosaics were first exhibited in the archaeological museum of Gaziantep, in May 2011, the purpose- built Zeugma Mosaic Museum was opened.