Bridges that Bridge Civilisations (Contd.)

The Karamagara Bridge

This bridge as representative in its design as of the era it belonged to, is under water today. But its engineering and architectural value remain as enduringly significant as its remarkable historicity.

The bridge, along with much of the Arapgir Çayı valley, has been submerged since the completion of the Keban Dam on the river Euphrates. Construction of the dam commenced in 1966 and was completed in 1974. The water so impounded created a reservoir as large as 675 square kilometres, making it the fourth largest lake in modern Turkey. As a consequence, the water level in the Euphrates valley and some of its upstream tributaries dramatically rose. Development invariably claims demise of extant institutions, structures and values. Of the many monuments of historic salience that the dam brought down under water, this bridge remains the most notable.

The Karamagara Bridge (Turkish: Karamağara Köprüsü, “Bridge of the Black Cave”) is a Byzantine or late Roman bridge in the ancient region of Cappadocia in eastern Turkey, and possibly the earliest known pointed arch bridge.

Pointed Arch Bridges
A pointed arch, also known as Ogival arch, or Gothic arch is an arch with a pointed crown, whose two curving sides meet at a relatively sharp angle at the top of the arch. The bridges that use pointed arches in its design and structure are referred to as Pointed Arch bridges.

Though some of the most dazzling examples of pointed arch architecture belong to Islamic buildings and mosques, particularly in 9th Century onwards, the credit for inventing this type of bridge historically, legitimately must go to Romans. Karamagara bridge is a brilliant evidence of this fact. It can credibly be called one of the earliest and finest examples of pointed arch bridge erected by Romans.

The Bridge
The bridge comprised of a single arch with a span of 17 meters that connected the rocky cliffs on the two sided of a deep gorge created by river Arapgir Çayı, an affluent of the Euphrates.

The bridge falls on an ancient and weather- beaten Roman road leading to the city of Melitene, in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. The road traversed through hard rocky terrain on both sides of the bridge. The road, therefore, had to be cut through these rocks. Its name Karamağara (“black cave”) probably derives from an artificially widened cavern on the southern bank which was carved into the darkish rock 75 m above the structure and served for protection of the crossing point. The bridge was quite frequently mentioned by early European travellers.

The pointed arch, one of the earliest in human civilisation, was built without the aid of mortar between voussoirs, the building blocks for the arch. A voussoir is a wedge- shaped or tapered stone used to construct an arch.

The Inscription and the Vintage
On its eastern downstream side a nearly intact Christian inscription in Greek runs along most of its length, citing almost verbatim Psalm 121, verse 8 of the Bible.
The text reads:

Κύριος ὁ Θεὸς φυλ[ά]ξει τὴν εἰσοδ[όν] σου κε τὴν ἐ[ξ]οδόν σου ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν καὶ ἔως τοῦ αἰῶνος, ἀμὴ[ν], ἀμ[ὴν], ἀ[μὴν].
Kýrios ho Theós phyláxei tēn eisodón sou ke tēn exodón sou apó tou nyn kai héōs tou aiṓnos, amḗn, amḗn, amḗn.

[The] Lord God may guard your entrance and your exit from now and unto all time, amen, amen, amen.

Not many bridges ante- dating Karamagara so explicitly invoked the Lord. The influence and invasion of Christianity in state matters were just beginning to take hold, only to be intensified and strengthened over several succeeding centuries.

Based on a palaeographic analysis of the Greek letter forms used in the above inscription, experts generally converge on dating the bridge to 5th-6th Century AD. 

The stones containing the Greek inscriptions were removed from the bridge and brought to the Elazığ Museum in 1972.

Legacy

In the history of architecture and specially in the context of Roman bridge construction tradition, Karamagara bridge occupies a unique position. Not only it represents introduction of an architectural design perfected and extensively used more than 300 years later, it also deserve being cited as a rare instance of use of pointed arches as opposed to the bulk of Roman masonry bridges built during those times that rested on semi-circular arches, or, to a lesser extent, on segmental arches.

Its historic salience also lies in the fact that it established conclusively pre-Islamic origin of the pointed arches, a conclusion amply supported by other late Roman and Sassanian structures, so evident in early church buildings in Syria and Mesopotamia. Undoubtedly the Muslim conquerors adopted this architecture, evolved and perfected it to an aesthetically superior, sophisticated, complex and magnificent style, symbolising the religious grandeur of Islam.

One would have wished that this bridge were not under water and were available for the visual pleasure and appreciation of this notable symbol of early Roman ingenuity and engineering skills. That, further downstream, at the village of Bahadın, there stands the remains of another partially submerged Roman bridge, is some consolation, but can barely overwhelm the sense of loss.

P.S.
With this, is concluded a ten- part series on the oldest bridges of the world. They may not be the grandest or the most magnificent or overly beautiful bridges, yet they offer an incredibly exciting insight into the struggle, spirit and triumph of human civilisation’s earliest builders.