Original subtitles

This summer a remote region of Turkey hit the headlines.

On the banks of the Euphrates archaeologists have discovered extraordinary examples of Roman art

buried in a forgotten ancient city,

but it is all about to be lost for ever under the flood waters of a new dam.

This film charts the archaeologists' race against time

as they struggle to rescue what they can before the waters rise.

Dawn at Belkis village, eastern Turkey.

Over the past 4 years

this dedicated team of French and Turkish archaeologists

have been coming here to the site of a forgotten ancient city to try to survey and explore its remains.

This is their last chance to explore the site. In a matter of months it will be flooded,

but by the end of this last dig the team will have discovered some of the greatest examples of ancient art ever found,

discoveries that would stun the world.

Buried somewhere in the valley below them, on the banks of the Euphrates,

is a city which was once one of the treasures of the Greek and Roman empires, the city of Zeugma.

It was once the most important crossing point of the Euphrates

and a thriving centre of the great trade routes between east and west.

Zeugma was founded by the Greeks in 300BC and quickly grew to become a major city.

It then flourished under later Roman rule when a legion of 6,000 soldiers guarded its vital bridge

and protected its trade routes on the path of the great Silk Road.

It was to become fabulously wealthy, a small piece of Rome on the Euphrates.

Over the centuries a few priceless mosaics have been looted from the buried site,

a tantalising glimpse of the wealth that must still lie buried in the valley,

but Zeugma has never been properly excavated and now it may be too late.

Soon it will disappear from the face of the earth.

This is the Birecik dam,

part of one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the world.

For the past 20 years the Turkish government has been building a series of dams on the Euphrates.

The plan is to generate electricity and irrigate an area of farmland the size of Wales.

This dam is now close to completion

and when it's finished the whole valley will become a reservoir.

The local villages will disappear under its waters

and more than 30,000 people will be displaced from their homes.

What will also disappear are the hidden houses and treasures of Zeugma.

They will be drowned under the waters of the Euphrates,

unless the archaeologists can get to them first.

Pierre Leriche is heading the team of rescue archaeologists

who have been given one last chance to find and save whatever they can of this fabulous buried city before it's too late.

Over the past 4 years they've been preparing for this final excavation.

Now it's the 11th hour and they've only been given a permit to dig for 6 weeks

on a vast site that would normally take years to excavate.

Under this flattened mound lie the foundations of a temple.

Nearby the grassy terraces of a stadium.

Clearly the city was once opulent

and this area must be full of villas and grand mansions, if only they could find them in time.

2,000 years ago this hillside was covered with the houses and grand public buildings of Zeugma,

rich with artefacts, statues and fabulous mosaics that would today be priceless.

The question is: where are those villas and mansions now?

The goal for the archaeologists is to find within 6 weeks at least one villa to excavate

out of the scores that must lie buried here.

Day 1 in Zeugma.

This small team of French and Turkish archaeologists have to split up to cover the site on both sides of the river.

They have 6 weeks to map the entire site and to learn what they can and rescue what they can from the ancient city.

Little do they know that by the time this dig is over they will have found treasures beyond their wildest dreams.

Zeugma is actually two cities on opposite banks of the Euphrates.

On the hillside is Seleucia, the wealthy Greco-Roman part

and on the flat plain is the ancient Greek city of Apamea

and it's Apamea that will disappear first under the flood waters.

One team sets off across the river for Apamea,

crossing at the point where the ancient bridge might once have been.

The scale of their task is huge. The site stretches for 125 acres

and none of it has been excavated before.

Their first job is to find the actual outline and structure of the city.

To do this they will have to find evidence of the thousands of metres of perimeter wall,

now mostly buried or destroyed.

In a few places sections of the wall are still standing,

evidence of just how strong the fortifications of the city once were.

Their task for the next few weeks is to search the whole of Apamea for fragments of the wall.

Its pieces lie scattered across the site like a vast jigsaw puzzle,

but there are huge gaps in their knowledge.

Thousands of metres of wall are still buried under the ground.

Ideally they would dig out the walls to get a clear picture of the structure of the city,

but this is just not possible in the time they have.

To speed things up the archaeologists need the help of the local people.

This Kurdish family have lived amongst the ruins for generations

and they are able to point Gerard Thebault towards a disused well deep below the ground.

This is a well that the archaeologists knew nothing about before,

but it reveals a crucial long stretch of the city's fortifications.

Piece by piece everything they've surveyed is drawn up onto paper

and gradually the walls and towers begin to take shape.

It is clear that the founders of the city shows the most sophisticated building scheme of the time

to ensure its defence.

The walls weren't built in simply, straight lines, but at sharp, defensive angles.

Now they have the outer limits of the city, but what lies buried within these walls?

Under these trees is an entire city: streets, houses, markets and temples.

It's impossible to uncover it all in the time they have left.

There is no question of excavating layer by layer as they would normally do.

Archaeologists would spend a lifetime trying to uncover the city that lies buried here,

but there is another way.

They ask for the help of Albert Hesse and Christophe Benech,

two scientists more used to seeking out oil and mineral deposits than finding lost cities.

They have brought with them a machine that could change everything.

This strange device can measure any tiny variations in the Earth's magnetic field.

Normally this magnetic field is at a constant, local background level,

but any large, solid rock or pieces of metal under the soil will cause the level to vary minutely.

The two sensors at the end of this pole monitor any changes in this background level.

The ancient city is covered in over 3 metres of very fine sedimentary soil

and the constant flooding of the Euphrates.

There are no natural rocks in the soil which means that any big underground stones registered by the machine

are likely to be the foundations of the city.

Buried roads, houses, temples and so on will all register as tiny fluctuations in the magnetic field.

Christophe Benech has to walk in perfect time with the beeps of the machine

as the data is fed down the wires to a recorder on his belt.

It takes days of surveying to cover the site, but it will be worth it.

Once the data is fed into the computer a detailed picture of exactly what lies below the soil begins to emerge.

These shadowy blocks represent houses, walls, cobbled streets,

the foundations of a city deep below the earth.

In a matter of days they get results that would have taken years of digging.

At night the archaeologists pour over the pictures trying to make sense of them.

Slowly the city under the soil is revealed, as if by magic.

A complete picture of a buried city with virtually no digging.

Back at the Birecik dam the building work is nearing completion, but for the archaeologists time is running out.

The teams exploring the Roman side of the city

have been trying to pinpoint the most promising place in the vast site to excavate in detail.

They have just 4 weeks to go and yet there is still little sign of Zeugma's buried treasure.

They have no chance of mapping this part of the city.

Here the machine that worked so well on the flat plain of Apamea

is unable to distinguish the natural rocks of the hillside from the stone foundations of the houses.

In previous years, while searching for a place to excavate,

the team have dug small exploratory sites all over Zeugma in the hope of striking a villa, rich in ancient artefacts,

but now they have to commit to 1 or 2 sites and do some proper digging.

There's no more time to keep on searching.

This is one of the two sites they've chosen to focus on. Its walls look promising,

but at this stage they have little idea whether this will turn out to be a grand villa, or a simple house.

After several days intensive digging they are still struggling to understand the site.

In the race against time the team know they will have to compromise normal archaeological procedures.

there is no time to examine each layer inch by inch.

They must dig down to the foundations as quickly as possible,

logging and recording what data they can on the way.

Finally they uncover fascinating examples of ancient life,

even 2,000-year-old drainpipes.

The archaeologists are beginning to piece together the layout of a house

which seems to have been preserved in an unusual way.

It looks like this is quite an ordinary house.

There is still no sign of the richly decorated villa they were hoping for,

but the discovery of a network of gullies

leads the archaeologists towards a dramatic insight into the layout of the hidden city,

an insight that might even get them closer to finding a villa.

They carefully squeeze through into a world that has perhaps been unexplored for 2,000 years.

These strange, narrow passages lead them further and further under the city.

The tunnels have been faultlessly built.

They're walking directly under the streets and houses of ancient Zeugma.

Every passage, every tunnel takes them deeper underground.

What they had discovered was the sewer system of the entire city.

The construction is classically Greek

and it must have been built by the first settlers of Zeugma in 300BC,

but then they discover another element of its history.

This is tantalising.

If they could follow the tunnels and map the sewer system they would have the ground plan for the entire city.

It might then be possible to identify the wealthy areas of the ancient city,

as the widest streets would probably be directly above widely spaced sewers.

But the mapping itself would take months, time they just don't have.

They have to abandon the sewers and concentrate their efforts above ground.

At the second site the digging is now well under way and they seem to be uncovering something significant.

Broken columns suggest something grand.

The more they dig the more they realise that this time they are uncovering a substantial Roman house.

They uncover more and more sections of walls, rooms and doorways.

It's beginning to dawn on them that they might well at last have found one of the great villas of Zeugma.

Something this size will almost certainly contain the mosaics and artefacts

that the archaeologists are also anxious to find.

They're now more than halfway through their 6 week dig and the site is getting bigger by the day.

They will never manage to uncover it all by hand in just 3 weeks,

so they take the decision to call for the help of something much more efficient.

They resort to techniques not often used in archaeology.

These diggers will shift quantities of earth in one day that would take weeks to remove by hand.

But there is a risk. Artefacts buried in the site could easily be damaged.

Every fragment of the villa is carefully drawn and catalogued,

just as it is found.

From the precise location of each fallen column they will later be able to recreate what the villa once looked like.

By carefully examining the ruins of this villa

the archaeologists hope to learn something about what happened in Zeugma

towards the end of the city's Roman occupation.

According to the history books, around 250 A.D.

Zeugma was attacked in the east by its old enemy, the Persians.

Descriptions of ancient texts suggest that they raided the city and defeated the Roman garrison.

Zeugma was sacked, burned and destroyed.

Over the next century the great legion that had defended the city was moved on

as the borders of the Roman Empire shifted away from the Euphrates.

From then on the city was in slow decline

and all this ancient history is coming to life in the ruins of Zeugma.

Pierre Leriche can see evidence of the events that took place here nearly 2,000 years ago

in every layer of this ruined house.

As this is an earthquake zone it is possible that the house was destroyed by a natural disaster,

but the dating of these coins discovered in the ashes

suggests that the fire happened at the time of the Persian raid.

Philip the Arabian's head on the coins dates the destruction of the villa to around 250 A.D.

After 4 weeks digging they have now gathered a collection of artefacts from the villa's remains.

These are the everyday domestic trappings of a wealthy Roman household

caught in a moment of time and buried for nearly 2,000 years.

Next they hope to find the precious mosaics.

Catherine Abadie Reynal is directing the detailed excavation of the villa.

They now have only 2 weeks left on their permit.

The team sift through the final layers, searching for more clues to what happened to this house.

They know they have found a wealthy house, potentially filled with incredible mosaics.

If they are to stand any chance of rescuing these treasures they must find them within the next few days.

And now unexpectedly they discover something very rare indeed.

As they brush away the earth from sections of wall

brightly coloured paintings emerge from beneath the crumbling mud.

The mudslide that filled the house has preserved and protected these rare wall paintings.

Such preservation is exceptional.

These paintings haven't seen the light of day for nearly 2,000 years.

Now that the paintings have been uncovered they will have to be cleaned and removed from the site.

Unexposed for centuries, they will deteriorate rapidly in the hot sun and humid air.

Now the archaeologists are almost out of time.

They only have 5 days left of this excavation,

but they are close to uncovering the final layers of Zeugma's history.

In a corner of a room

Catherine and her team discover something that they've all been hoping for since the dig began.

It is a mosaic floor, but it seems to be disappointingly plain,

but then Greek inscriptions, the names of characters from ancient myths, begin to be uncovered.

Over the next 3 days 63 square metres of a richly coloured and exquisitely designed mosaic are revealed.

There's no question. There must be many others still to be found in this villa.

With only 2 days left on their permit

this one priceless mosaic is finally uncovered.

The discovery of this extraordinary mosaic caused an international outcry

and the archaeologists managed to persuade the authorities to extend their permits

for another series of short digs to find more.

Jean-Pierre Darmon, an international expert in Roman mosaic art,

flew in when he heard about the find.

The mosaic tells the story of a Greek myth.

It is the story of the Queen of Crete, Pasipha�,

who gives birth to the Minotaur and the building of the famous labyrinth.

They have to remove the mosaic from the site to rescue it from the impending flood.

They cover it with glue,

then a layer of gauze is hammered down on the thousands of tiny tiles to hold them in place.

Once the glue has dried,

the mosaic has to be cut up into pieces for transportation to the local museum.

Sections of floor are then prised from the ground with the mosaics on top and hoisted onto a waiting truck.

For the archaeologists the search continues to discover the rest of the priceless mosaics

that might still be buried in this villa.

Building work on the dam has finished. In the village below local people have been told they must leave.

They tear down the very fabric of their homes

to salvage anything that can be used to rebuild their lives elsewhere.

Doors, windows, bricks, beams are ripped out.

They'll be used to build houses elsewhere.

The houses that have been promised to them by the government are still not finished.

30,000 people are now on the move.

Over the next 3 months the waters of the Euphrates will gather behind the dam

rising daily to eventually create the vast reservoir.

In just over a month Belkis village will be gone.

Two weeks after that the newly discovered villa will also be gone.

It's now apparent that Catherine's discovery of the mosaic was just the beginning.

As the waters are rising round them, French and Turkish archaeologists unearth 14 rooms

and more mosaics, each one a masterpiece.

In any room of this house you have different image

and you have to imagine that

the child who is born in this house has all the time in front of his eyes this image.

His imagination is formed by this image and the others in the house.

These priceless treasures are all from just one villa.

There must be scores of other villas as beautiful as this buried in the lower terraces of Zeugma

that will never now be found,

but at this one site it's now possible to recreate what this villa might once have looked like.

The central courtyard with its fountain, columns and wall paintings.

The elaborate bath house.

The ornate dining room with its extraordinary mosaic.

The villa is the find of a lifetime.

Its discovery will for ever raise the question of what else might have been found in Zeugma,

if only they'd had more time.

The archaeologists now have to leave Zeugma.

One more dig will be allowed further up the terraces by another team

and then it will all be over.

It's now June 2000 and the waters have been rising for just over a month.

They have now reached the villa and Zeugma.

Apart from its higher terraces

the ancient city, with all its secret treasures,

has now vanished

for ever.