This second article on ancient roads around Zeugma deals mainly with navigation along the river itself and north-south routes on both banks of the Euphrates. Like its predecessor (Comfort et al 2000), this one is based on extensive survey work in the years 1996 to 1999 during the excavations carried out at Zeugma by a Franco-Turkish mission. It discusses sites located in the region surrounding the ancient city on both east and west banks of the river Euphrates and seeks to identify the principal roads of the region used in antiquity. Maps to complement those prepared for the preceding article are included.In Comfort et al 2000, ancient crossing points of the river Euphrates in southern Turkey were discussed in the light of survey work conducted with the help of satellite photos in and around the reservoir created by the Birecik dam. This dam was completed in summer 2000. The lake created behind the Birecik dam stretches north about 100km as far as the Ataturk dam, for the most part constrained in a narrow gorge; a second lake now also reaches for about 20km south from Birecik to the Carchemish dam, itself approximately 6km north of the Syrian border. The survey was conducted over six visits between 1996 and 1999. Given the shortage of resources and the vast area covered (about 2,500km) it can only be considered a preliminary investigation and was indeed originally undertaken with a view only to proving the usefulness of satellite photographs as an aid to archaeological survey work.

Following the Euphrates in antiquity: north-south routes around Zeugma

It was more than 100 years ago, in March 1920, that British troops camping in the ruins of some unknown ancient fort on the Euphrates, named Al-Salihiyah in Arabic, during the skirmishing that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the First World War, dug a trench and excavated some astonishing wall paintings. The officers in charge, along with the Civil Commissioner, managed to call in an American archaeologist who happened to be in Syria at the end of April, James Henry Breasted, first director of the Oriental Institute in Chicago (founded the previous year, 1919). Breasted visited in May, in dangerous conditions and with the British about to withdraw. He stayed only a day, managing to clear and take photographs of the murals that depict the sacrifices of Conon and Julius Terentius in what later became known as the Temple of Bel or the Temple of the Palmyrene Gods.

100 years of Dura Europos

The present study has been conceived on the trails of those works about the Roman Near East and the relations and interactions with the Eastern neighbours and the local populations. In more recent times, the on-going excavations projects in the area and the new notions of interaction and integration related to the Roman presence have made relevant further steps in the understanding of the topic. Considering exclusively Roman or, at the contrary, exclusively Parthian (or Sasanian) a site means, nowadays, ignoring the dynamics that characterized the whole area in the period at issue. It is doubtless that the starting point for the comprehension of such dynamics must be the identification of the points of interactions as well as the differences, always bearing in mind the hybridisation that occurred. 
The term hybridisation indeed, even if it is a modern word, perfectly fits with the mixture of races, religions and social institutions that shaped the Near East in the period from the Hellenistic period to the late 4th century CE. The theory is quite easily applicable in the major centres (Nisibis, Singara, Hatra), where the abundance of data is widely used to identify this kind of hybridisation such as the distinctive and unmistakable feature of a given culture as well, while it appears to be slightly tougher to track in the minor settlements. The lack of historical and archaeological evidence, indeed, affects our knowledge about the rural landscape and the countryside itself. Some of the minor sites mentioned in the literary sources are still not only unexcavated, but quite often unidentified too, while the fewer where excavation works have been conducted are the same sites almost practically unknown to the ancient sources (see the specifica case of Tell Barri). Notwithstanding this lack of evidence on both sides the countryside and the rural landscape still remains a keystone for the understanding of the Roman occupation in the area, as well as the organization and administration of the newly acquired territory after the severian annexation. The integration of the archaeological data with the known literary and epigraphic evidence could be the only way through which the presence of Rome beyond the Euphrates could be better understood. The region itself, indeed, represents one of the most archaeologically important areas of the world and thus the isolation of a given event in a specific chronological period forcedly needs more elements than elsewhere.

Settlement Patterns and Cultural Interactions in Northern Mesopotamia (2nd - 4th century CE)

Karkemish. An Ancient Capital on the Euphrates

L'etude des vestiges osseux du chantier 9 (du III e siecle avant J.-C. au X e siecle apres J.-C.) du site de Zeugma porte sur un total de 6837 restes pour un poids de 36 833 g. Il a ete possible de determiner 36 % de ces restes. L'alimentation des habitants de cette partie de la ville repose essentiellement sur les especes d'embouche (96 %). Les bovins et le porc representent les principales sources de proteines. Les bovins ont certainement plusieurs fonctions et sont abattus a des âges varies, tandis que les porcs sont eleves uniquement pour la viande et sont donc abattus en fin de croissance. Les caprines (mouton et chevre) constituent une source de viande secondaire mais loin d'etre negligeable, leur elevage ayant egalement pour but la production de produits derives (lait / laine). La chasse (cerf, chevreuil, sanglier, lievre) est une source de viande anecdotique. Les restes d'oiseaux et de mollusques sont peu presents (absence de tamisage realise), il n'est par consequent pas possible de conclure sur leur place dans l'alimentation des hommes a Zeugma. L'etude a permis de mettre en evidence des ossements d'especes vraisemblablement non consommees comme le cheval, l'âne, leurs hybrides, le dromadaire (Camelus sp.) et des carnivores domestiques.

https://www.revmedvet.com/2008/RMV159_251_275.pdf

La gestion des animaux à Zeugma (Turquie) : étude des restes fauniques du chantier 9 (époques hellénistique, romaine, byzantine et islamique)

Géographie historique de la vallée du Moyen-Euphrate

De 1900 a 1934, F. Cumont n'a pas hesite a se rendre a plusieurs reprises sur le terrain pour se procurer des materiaux nouveaux dans ses recherches sur l'histoire des regions orientales de l'empire romain. Que ce soit dans le Pont, en Syrie orientale ou a Doura-Europos, sur le bas Euphrate syrien, il a su affronter avec tenacite les plus grandes difficultes, les longues marches a cheval et les contraintes de la fouille archeologique pour ouvrir des champs nouveaux a la connaissance historique. Son sens aiguise de l'observation du terrain servi par une inepuisable erudition lui a permis de rapporter de ses voyages une exceptionnelle moisson documentaire qu'il a eu a coeur de mettre au plus vite a la disposition de la communaute scientifique. Les publications qu'il en a tirees constituent encore aujourd'hui la base de toute recherche sur les regions qu'il a parcourues.

Pierre Leriche

Papers

Géographie historique de la vallée du Moyen-Euphrate

Franz Cumont homme de terrain