[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
For years now water has become an increasingly prominent subject in the study of the ancient Mediterranean, approached not simply as a natural resource, but as an active element in the formation of landscapes, communities, and networks of mobility. Rivers exemplify the complexity of this relationship. They could serve simultaneously as obstacles and routes of communication, as geographical boundaries and organizing features of inhabited landscapes, and as sources of sustenance whose changing courses and periodic floods could threaten the communities established along their banks. The bridges that negotiated these waterways invite similarly nuanced treatment, yet ancient bridges tend to be considered primarily as feats of engineering or as components of road networks. Bridges in the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by Anna Klara Falke, Florian Neitmann, and Aleksandar Simić, productively adopts a much broader perspective, with contributions engaging with how river crossings (whether monumental bridges or more transient structures) were developed, conceptualized, and imbued with political, social, and religious meaning.
The volume developed from a 2022 workshop at the University of Münster and is described by its editors as an “anthology.” The designation is apt. Its twelve contributions range from Mesopotamia and Egypt to the Alps, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the Jordan and Danube valleys, and from prehistoric timber construction to the bridges of Justinian and medieval Iraq. Its chronological and geographical reach consequently extends well beyond what might conventionally be understood as the ancient Mediterranean. The approaches are equally varied, encompassing archaeology, architectural analysis, philology, ancient history, philosophy, and landscape studies. Even the definition of a bridge remains productively unstable: permanent structures share these pages with pontoon bridges, ferries, fords, and other means of negotiating waterways. The result is less a comprehensive history of ancient bridges than an exploration of the surprisingly diverse questions that can be asked of them.
The opening section establishes this breadth particularly well. Robert Kade’s study of the lexical semantics of bridges and river crossings in early Mesopotamia and pharaonic Egypt argues that the absence of consistently distinct terminology for bridges, whose names overlap with terms for structures such as dams and dikes, corresponds to the comparative rarity of monumental bridges in these regions. His conclusion that environmental and social conditions made bridges essential infrastructure in parts of Europe but only intermittently advantageous in Mesopotamia deserves fuller exploration, yet it establishes a problem that recurs throughout the volume: the relationship between the physical character of specific riverscapes and the culturally specific strategies for crossing them. Michael Boch makes the volume’s sharpest methodological turn, examining Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological discussion of the bridge as a structure that both gathers and defines a landscape. Although readers principally interested in ancient bridge construction may find this chapter comparatively distant from the remainder of the volume, its proposition that bridges do not merely occupy landscapes but help create meaningful places within them resonates with several later contributions.
The four chapters on river crossings develop these questions through more archaeological and environmental approaches. Ulrike Steinkrüger’s survey of pre-Roman wooden bridges in the Alpine region and German low mountain ranges demonstrates the sophistication of indigenous timber construction from the Neolithic through the Iron Age. Particularly valuable is her emphasis on bridge building as a dynamic response to shifting waterways, settlement patterns, and increasingly complex road systems. Roman technology introduced changes, including greater use of iron fasteners, but did not create bridge-building ex nihilo. Steinkrüger instead identifies an independent Celtic tradition that likely influenced later regional Roman practice.
The three chapters that follow are especially rewarding when read together. Luca Volpi reconstructs possible crossings of the Tigris in northern Mesopotamia by combining literary and artistic evidence with archaeological survey and the changing geomorphology of the river. His discussion complicates the formidable boundary presented by the Tigris in Greek and Roman narratives: a river whose crossing was memorable to invading armies could remain a routinely traversed component of the local landscape. Andrew Petersen broadens the discussion to late antique and medieval Iraq. Permanent bridges across the Tigris and Euphrates remained impractical, but their tributaries, canals, and irrigation channels supported a diverse tradition of fixed crossings, sometimes combining the functions of bridge and hydraulic installation. Anna Klara Falke reaches comparable conclusions for the environs of the Jordan River. Despite the absence of secure evidence for a permanent bridge across the river in biblical or Roman times, roads, fords, ferries, and later bridges attest to persistent movement across it. Collectively, these chapters make one of the volume’s strongest points: studying ancient bridges requires studying crossings more generally. The absence of monumental bridge remains need not imply either immobility or the perception of a river as an impermeable boundary.
This observation carries naturally into the section on military crossings. Miloš Macan examines the methods used by Alexander the Great, including pontoon bridges and improvised craft, against the broader testimony of ancient military narratives. Read after the discussion of the varied means of crossing watercourses in the Near East, Alexander’s distinction is less the use of unprecedented technologies than his ability to deploy a range of crossing strategies effectively and rapidly. Aleksandar Simić’s study of the Danube at the Iron Gates likewise places Trajan’s celebrated bridge (a.k.a. the Bridge of Apollodorus) within the longer history of movement, settlement, and military infrastructure in the region. Particularly revealing is the imbalance in the evidence: the bridge is exceptionally well documented as an instrument of Trajan’s Dacian campaigns, while its operation in the decades following the conquest and its eventual decline remain comparatively obscure. As already attested in the contributions of Volpi and Petersen, extraordinary military events offer insight into these structures that are often overlooked despite their importance.
The two chapters on the religious dimensions of bridges shift attention from movement across rivers to the meanings attached to crossing them. Isidora Tolić examines ritual mockery at the Kephissos bridge during the procession to Eleusis, connecting the gephyrismoi with the apotropaic potential of abuse and with the liminality inherent in the act of crossing. Her lexical approach also forms a useful counterpart to Kade’s opening chapter, demonstrating the different cultural associations embedded in the language of bridges. Martina Biamino then considers bridges in Procopius’ De Aedificiis, especially Justinian’s bridge across the Sangarios. The chapter persuasively situates these constructions within both Christian conceptions of the road as a metaphor for salvation and traditions of imperial bridge building. Procopius’ presentation reverses familiar classical narratives of rulers attempting hubristically to master nature: the pontoon bridges of Xerxes and Caligula become foils for Justinian’s permanent, divinely favored works. The emperor himself consequently emerges as a kind of bridge, connecting territories, communities, and ultimately the human and divine orders.
The final section offers two architectural case studies that demonstrate the opportunities and limitations of studying individual monuments. Moritz Reinäcker’s investigation of the Ponte di Augusto at Narni is an exemplary piece of Bauforschung, combining laser scanning, measured drawings, and close examination of the masonry. Corbels associated with scaffolding, carefully executed rustication, construction debris incorporated into the concrete core, and evidence from cramps for late antique repair together permit a remarkably detailed reconstruction of the bridge’s construction and (re)use. The study leaves for now unanswered an enticing larger question: why did Augustan patrons undertake a bridge of such exceptional ambition at Narni?
Patricia Ana Argüelles-Álvarez, Enrique Aragón-Núñez, and María Juana López-Medina instead employ photogrammetry to investigate the historical bridge of Bayyana near Almería and the possibility that its surviving fabric incorporates a Roman predecessor. Their reconstruction of the regional road network makes a Roman-period crossing highly plausible, but the non-invasive architectural evidence cannot securely demonstrate that the lowest surviving masonry itself is Roman. This uncertainty is instructive. As several contributions emphasize, a Roman crossing need not have been a masonry bridge at all, and later rebuilding can render the physical history of a strategically important crossing exceptionally difficult to disentangle.
The diversity of these studies inevitably produces some unevenness. The geographical and chronological boundaries implied by the volume’s title are loose, and individual authors do not always define “bridge” in precisely the same way. Yet greater uniformity would arguably undermine the volume’s principal achievement. Cross-references among the chapters show the benefits of the interdisciplinary conversations from which the collection emerged, and unexpected parallels repeatedly appear between regions that are rarely treated together.
The volume is attractively produced and generously illustrated, with color used where appropriate. Some graphics contain lettering that is difficult to read in the printed volume, notably Figures 4.2 and 4.3, but typographical and factual errors are otherwise uncommon. Among the few corrections, the bridge at Tello belongs to the third millennium BCE rather than the third century BCE (p. xi); “forfould” appears for “fourfold” on p. 57; and Bithynia is placed in northeastern rather than northwestern Anatolia on p. 284.
Bridges in the Ancient Mediterranean therefore succeeds less by establishing a unified model for the study of ancient bridges than by demonstrating how much remains to be gained from treating them as a distinct subject of inquiry. Many of its contributions present research that will undoubtedly develop further, and their juxtaposition suggests productive directions for that work. At a moment when environmental and landscape approaches continue to reshape the study of the ancient world, bridges offer particularly revealing evidence for the interaction between human communities and mutable natural environments.
Authors and titles
Anna Klara Falke, Florian Neitmann, and Aleksandar Simić, “Introduction”
Part I. Linguistic and Philosophical Considerations on Bridges
- Robert Kade, “Bridges over Troubled Etymologies: On the Lexical Semantics of Crossing Rivers”
- Michael Boch, “The Bridge as a Building of Orientation and Dwelling: Martin Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Hermeneutical Space in an Interdisciplinary Perspective”
Part II. River Crossings at Different Times
- Ulrike Steinkrüger, “Pre-Roman Wooden Bridge Building in the Alpine Region and the German Low Mountain Range Zone”
- Luca Volpi, “Where to Cross the Tigris River: Dynamics of Mobility across Riversides in the Area of Northern Mesopotamia”
- Andrew Petersen, “Ancient and Medieval Bridges in Iraq”
- Anna Klara Falke, “Crossing the River Jordan through the Ages: Fords, Ferries, and Bridges”
Part III. Bridges and the Military
- Miloš Macan, “The Problem of River Crossings in the Campaigns of Alexander the Great”
- Aleksandar Simić, “Crossing the Danube in the Djerdap Region: Challenges and Significance”
Part IV. Religious Dimension of Bridges
- Isidora Tolić, “The Jester’s Crossing: Mockery and Apotropaism at the Kephissos Bridge”
- Martina Biamino, “Justinian’s Bridges and the Emperor as a Bridge: Procopius’ De Aedificiis V 3”
Part V. Case Studies of Individual Bridges
- Moritz Reinäcker, “Construction History and Reconstruction of the Ponte di Augusto at Narni, Italy”
- Patricia Ana Argüelles-Álvarez, Enrique Aragón-Núñez, and María Juana López-Medina, “Almería, Nexus of the Connectivity between the Baetica and the Tarraconense Provinces: The Case of the Historical Bridge of Bayyana on the Roman Road from Urci to Turaniana mansiones”