Zeugma Mosaics Museum: A Museum of Hellenistic and Roman Zeugma in Gaziantep
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- Turkey
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical
- Civilizations
- Ancient Greek, Roman
- Site type
- Museum
On this page16 sections
History
Zeugma Mosaics Museum is a museum in Gaziantep, Türkiye, built to preserve archaeological finds from the ancient city of Zeugma, especially its mosaics and wall paintings. Zeugma is traditionally said to have been founded as Seleucia by Seleucus I Nicator, founder of the Seleucid Kingdom, a Hellenistic state formed after the division of Alexander the Great’s empire. Its collections present the Hellenistic Greek and Roman heritage of the city, including material from the phases that shaped its houses, public spaces, and artistic traditions.
Rescue excavations and the Birecik Dam
The modern history of the museum was shaped by the Birecik Dam, planned within the Southeastern Anatolia Project, which began in 1980 to provide water and energy to southeastern Türkiye. Dam construction started in 1996. When the dam began hydroelectric operation in 2000, approximately 80 percent of ancient Zeugma was buried beneath the reservoir.
Efforts to protect Zeugma’s antiquities led to rescue excavations in 1995, carried out by the Gaziantep Archaeological Museum with international organizations. The finds were first transferred to the Gaziantep Museum. Its limited capacity prompted the construction of an adjacent extension in 2005, followed by the development of a dedicated Zeugma museum from 2008.
Zeugma’s mosaics and other antiquities had remained relatively little known until around 2000, when the appearance of artifacts in museums coincided with growing awareness that the dam would flood much of the ancient city. The rescue work continued after the museum opened, and many mosaics were still covered in 2011.
Opening and continuing preservation
The museum opened to visitors on 27 May 2011. Its official inauguration took place on 9 September 2011, conducted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Culture Minister Ertuğrul Günay. The collection and its associated excavation project include mosaics, frescoes, sculptures, architectural elements, funerary monuments, and sarcophagi. The museum became the world’s largest museum devoted to mosaics, surpassing the Bardo National Museum in Tunis.
The museum also preserves the history of objects separated from Zeugma through looting. Parts of the Metiochos and Parthenope mosaic, discovered in 1993, had been removed before the work was recovered. Pieces identified in the Menil Collection in Houston were returned to Gaziantep.
The museum and its artifacts survived the Turkey–Syria earthquake of 2023 without damage, although much of Gaziantep was heavily affected. All museum staff survived, and the museum reopened in April 2023.
Remains
Museum complex and archaeological displays
Building and spatial arrangement
The museum occupies a total area of 30,000 square metres. Its U-shaped complex has an exhibition wing on the western side, while the central and eastern wings contain workshops, glass-enclosed restoration rooms, administrative rooms, a café, a museum shop, and a congress centre. A covered central courtyard contains columns and a statue. The exhibition occupies about one-third of the building across three floors.
The displays contain 1,700 square metres of mosaics. At the museum’s opening, 1,450 square metres were housed in the galleries, while another 1,000 square metres were undergoing restoration. Mosaics and wall paintings are presented partly with columns, fountains, and other architectural elements, allowing them to be seen alongside features associated with their original settings.
Architectural elements and interpretation
The collection also includes approximately 140 square metres of frescoes, statues, four Roman fountains, columns, stelae, and sarcophagi. A fresco is a wall painting made on fresh plaster, while a stele is an upright carved or inscribed stone slab. Sarcophagi are stone or monumental coffin containers. Together with the mosaics, these elements represent the range of material recovered from Zeugma.
Interactive screens explain Zeugma’s history and exploration, as well as the excavation and rescue operations prompted by the dam. An adjacent room shows a film, while touchscreens and motion-sensitive laser projections across the three floors explore mosaic structure and technique through interactive activities.
Statues and entrance reliefs
Statue of Mars
A bronze statue of Mars, the Roman god of war, stands 1.45 metres high on a six-metre-high column. It was found in the House of Poseidon and carries slight traces of burning. The statue is thought to have been hidden there for protection during the Sasanian attack of AD 252. The Sasanian Empire was an Iranian dynasty that ruled much of the Near East from the third to the seventh century AD. The column allows the statue to be seen from almost every point in the building.
Dexiosis reliefs
Two dexiosis reliefs stand near the entrance. A dexiosis is a greeting or oath-making scene in which two figures clasp their right hands. These reliefs show the Commagene king Antiochus I shaking hands with Apollo or Mithras and with Heracles. Commagene was a Hellenistic kingdom in southeastern Anatolia, and Antiochus I was one of its kings.
Mythological and narrative mosaics
The Gypsy Girl
The so-called “Gypsy Girl” is a mosaic fragment showing a young girl whose hair is held beneath a cap, with loose curls falling at the sides. A possible remnant of a flower or ribbon appears to the right, while traces of vine leaves rise above and to the left of her head. The remaining form may have belonged to a thyrsus, a staff associated with Dionysian worship, held either by the girl or by a nearby figure.
The fragment dates to the second century AD and has been interpreted either as Gaia or as a maenad in a Dionysian scene. A maenad was a female follower of Dionysus, the Greek god associated with wine, theatre, and ecstatic worship. Displayed in a separate darkened room on the upper floor, the fragment is the museum’s best-known mosaic and its emblem.
Oceanus and Tethys
The Oceanus and Tethys mosaic depicts Oceanus and his wife Tethys, primordial sea deities in Greek mythology, surrounded by marine creatures and four Eros figures riding dolphins. Oceanus has crab-claw horns and holds a rudder, while Tethys has two wings on her forehead. Eros represents desire or love.
The mosaic was found at the bottom of a pool. Its overhead viewing position explains why two of the Eros figures appear upside down. Special glass pieces may have been made specifically for the work, producing its vivid colours.
Metiochos and Parthenope
The third-century Metiochos and Parthenope mosaic is framed by stepped pyramids, a guilloche band, and broad white and narrow black bands. A guilloche is an interlaced ornamental pattern. Labels identify the figures, who sit on the cushions of a sofa-like couch. Parthenope wears a strapless tunic, a fallen cloak, bracelets, a diadem, and a pearl earring. Metiochos wears a tunic with two vertical stripes and a cloak folded in his lap.
The mosaic was badly damaged and looted before its discovery in 1993. Some removed sections were later identified in Houston and returned to Gaziantep, reconnecting the museum’s display with the history of the work’s dispersal.
Eros and Psyche
The Eros and Psyche mosaic is framed by two rows of perspective blocks and a broad double acanthus band. The band issues from a bearded male face and ends in large acanthus leaves. Its foliage contains grapes, apples, pears, plums, pomegranates, figs, flowers, and tendrils.
Eros and Psyche sit on a padded couch with their feet on a broad footstool. Eros is barefoot, bare-chested, winged, and crowned with leaves. Psyche wears a sleeved tunic, a translucent cloak, a leaf crown, and a veil. A polished metal krater appears behind them. The work was found in the House of Poseidon and dates from the second to the middle of the third century AD. Psyche is the personification of the soul in Greek mythology.
Triumph of Dionysus
The second-century Triumph of Dionysus formed part of a T-shaped floor mosaic in the House of Poseidon, together with a scene of Pasiphae and Daedalus. Its borders combine a continuous right-angled meander pattern with alternating swastikas, rectangles containing Solomon’s knots, red-and-white wave patterns, and an inner band of laurel leaves. A Solomon’s knot is an ornament formed by interlaced loops.
Dionysus stands on an eight-wheeled chariot drawn by two panthers and holds a decorated thyrsus. Nike, the personification of victory, holds the panthers’ reins, while a dancing maenad with cymbals appears beside them. Inscriptions identify the principal figures. The mosaic’s imagery and inscriptions preserve a scene centered on Dionysus and the religious world associated with his worship.
