Building harbours in the early Byzantine era: the persistence of Roman

technology

The Byzantine Empire, otherwise called the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the
continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern territories during the late vestige and the Middle
Ages when its capital was Constantinople. The Roman Empire in the fifth century AD and
existed for an additional thousand years until it tumbled to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. For the
greater part of its reality, the realm has been the most impressive financial, social, and military
power in Europe. "Byzantine Empire" is a term made after the finish of the realm; Its residents
kept on alluding to their domain basically as the Roman Empire and themselves as Romans, a
term the Greeks used to allude to themselves in Ottoman occasions. Albeit the Roman state
proceeded and its customs kept up with, present-day history specialists, recognize Byzantium
from its manifestation since it was focused in Constantinople, situated more towards Greek than
Latin culture, and was formed by Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Different occasions from the fourth to sixth hundreds of years mark the change time frame in
which the Greek East and Latin West of the Roman Empire wandered. Under Theodosius I,
Christianity turned into the state religion and other strict practices were restricted. Under the
standard of Heraclius, the military and organization of the domain were rebuilt and Greek was
embraced for true use instead of Latin.

The boundaries of the realm faltered through different patterns of decay and recuperation. During
the rule of Justinian I, the domain arrived at its most noteworthy degree, after a large part of the
generally Roman western Mediterranean coast including North Africa, Italy, and Rome was
recovered, an additional two centuries celebrated. The Byzantine-Sasanian War drained the
realm's assets and during the main Muslim successes of the seventh century, it lost its most
extravagant areas, Egypt and Syria, to the Rashidun Caliphate. During the Macedonian line, the
domain extended again and went on for a very long time. Macedonian Renaissance finished with
the deficiency of quite a bit of Asia Minor to the Seljuks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
This fight prepared for the Turks to get comfortable Anatolia. The realm recuperated during the
reclamation of Komen. Constantinople was the biggest and most extravagant city in Europe in
the twelfth century. The realm experienced a deadly blow during the Fourth Crusade when
Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the regions recently governed by the domain were
partitioned into rival Greek and Latin Byzantine realms. Regardless of the possible recapturing
of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire stayed only one of a few opponent little states
in the locale throughout the previous two centuries of its reality. The fall of Constantinople to the
Ottoman Empire in 1453 finished the Byzantine Empire. The domain of Trebizond was
vanquished eight years after the fact during the attack of 1461. The last replacement express, the
Principality of Theodore, was vanquished by the Ottomans. 1475.

Little is known about port construction in the early Byzantine period. Few real sites have been
identified and literary evidence is virtually non-existent.

Building artificial harbors in coastal areas, where all elements of nature seem to have conspired
against success, is one of the most impressive achievements of mankind. When such efforts bear
fruit, they represent human triumphs over the sea, however temporary. Surprisingly, Procopius is
quite cautious at this point, where an excessive or exuberant presentation of this adventure would
not have been out of place in his laudation. the size of the natural obstacles these constructions
had to overcome tended to underestimate rather than exaggerate.

However, that their positioning on top of one another to create a long wall of regular courses that
cut across the surface from the depths of the sea was a major technical achievement for any
pre-industrial society. Unfortunately, Procopio only mentioned this construction without
comment. decided to forego any discussion of the incredible technology and building skills
required to accomplish such an amazing feat.

His claim that the boxes rested on foundations suggests Justinian's builders were aware of a
potentially fatal problem for any breakwater built on a sandy or muddy seabed. Remove the
ground from under such facilities and cause their damage or eventual collapse.
In ancient times, Roman port builders in Caesarea Maritima, Israel, had found a remedy for this
annoying natural phenomenon: When they were standing on a sandy ground on which they had
to build two massive breakwaters, they first installed a foundation platform randomly placed
stones on the seabed, which wider than the breakwaters that were supposed to be on that
platform; Such a breakwater minimized the collapse of larger structures and also delayed the
unwanted settlement of such heavy structures, as its own weight forced to sand and mud slowly
but relentlessly to drain away.

The construction of a sea breakwater on a foundation suggests that an important construction

technique from the rich legacy of Roman engineering has not been lost. such an empirical
solution to stabilize moles. In Heraeum and Eutropius, the wheel, or in this case a riprap base,
may have been reinvented, but it seems rather that the continuity of the past is seen here. The
early Byzantine port engineers could have chosen what they needed from the extensive and
sophisticated technological legacy that was handed down to them. It appears they did this on
these two Bosphorus port projects when they laid the foundations on the ocean floor before
construction of the breakwaters began.

Also, this passage does not rule out that the central structures of the regular courses, the
breakwaters themselves, were built on the seaside in a stepped construction method. Such a
design feature would have given the breakwater surface even more durability. more exposed to
wave motion. The stepped outer surface of the breakwater would have reduced the energy of the
incoming waves and reduced their potential for damage.

Procopio's reference to "rough carved stones" placed or placed in the central structure suggests
the construction of a protective wall, possibly on either side of the pier but certainly on its
outside. The inclined arrangement would also have been an effective design feature to divert
coastal currents as well. Therefore, the correct angle of the breakwaters in relation to the
prevailing winds, currents, and normal long-term swell would have reduced routine maintenance
needs and extended the life of the port.
All of these construction techniques, to which we refer so casually in this passage, are very
advanced, one might even say modern, but they were by no means unique; they were the
continuation of a great tradition of maritime building that the Romans had inherited since ancient
times. but much improved later after his discovery of the pozzolana, a hydraulic concrete, and its
use in the Thing in Italy at the end of the second century BC. After successful experimentation
with this new material in this republican port, the Romans had eliminated the need to locate
marine facilities only where nature provided a suitable setting.

Port archeology is still too limited to know how often similar engineering skills have been used
in building new ports or repairing old facilities. It must be remembered that the situation
described by Procopio, the construction of an artificial harbor, is seen from coast in any weather.
Since it offered no natural advantages, it was a supreme test for the engineers of antiquity, which
could only take place if the emperor was personally and financially involved. We do not know
how many of these man-made harbors were ever built in ancient times or in Byzantine times.
Most port locations had natural protection by a promontory, barrier island, or other feature.
Adding artificial facilities to complement what nature had already provided was a much easier
and cheaper task.

When repairing existing structures, convenience was usually the rule. The extravagance of
overbuilding was likely unusual, but more likely to occur on an Empire-sponsored project. Most
ancient and early Byzantine cities relied on their own resources for the maintenance of their
buildings and public spaces. Any random winning action that could have taken place was
completely unpredictable. In addition to the normal municipal income, local sponsors or
members of the urban elite provided year after year the additional funds needed to keep a city
going. If the port fees weren't enough. To meet normal maintenance needs, or when a natural
disaster has created an extreme situation, a wealthy person is most likely asked or asked to draw
a project as a concrete sign of their duty or responsibility. Such a public service might not be as
glamorous as the financing of a new church but it would have been absolutely necessary for the
port cities if the maritime trade continued unhindered.
To date, only a few ancient or Byzantine ports have been investigated; Of these explorations, the
ongoing explorations at Caesarea Maritima have provided the most information. Although this
construction of the port took place more than five centuries before the construction of Heraeum
and Eutropius, many of the structural elements and design subtleties referred to by Procopius in
De Aedificiis can be seen in the facilities of Herod. The line of continuity or conformity from the
Augustan period to the early Byzantine era is clear. , the use of an outer rock wall to protect an
inner core structure and the positioning of breakwaters to minimize the attack of waves by the
heaviest storms, are features that find parallels at Caesarea Maritima.

Justinian's Imperial engineers would have been very comfortable at the Caesarea construction
site, where so many technological innovations appear to have emerged for the first time,
particularly the use of wooden boxes in port construction. For the first time in history, the boxes
swam hundreds of feet from the shore before submerging to form regular rows of blocks for a
breakwater.

A large hollow wooden box was found under the sea at the end of Caesarea's northern
breakwater in 1982. This double-walled chest or crib was actually a scaffolding that was
supposed to contain pozzolans. It had been built on land and taken to its location in small boats.
and immersed by filling the space between its two vertical walls with concrete. It landed on the
ocean floor on a series of rubble foundations that had previously been built.

Although Procopius gave no indication of what their chests were or how they worked, the
Caesarea find provided a highly likely archaeological explanation. The shape of Caesarea was
enormous and was carried away from the coast before being submerged in the sea, hitting two of
its descriptive elements. It also rested on a series of rubble foundations. In this way, two long
walls of “Regular Courses” could have been built even from great depths of water.

There is another possible explanation for the use of the chests: they could have transported
stones to a specific location in the ocean. eventually, it overcame the upwelling of the forest and
sank into the sea. There are problems with this interpretation, however: such a filled box would
have been very difficult, or perhaps impossible, for the ancient builders to control its descent; If
the critical weight was reached, it would have slid under the sea quickly, with a very real
possibility of falling on impact with the seabed or a previously submerged crate. In such a case,
its contents would have been spilled haphazardly. In some cases, an uncontrollable descent
resulting in a hard landing may not have been an undesirable outcome. However, if the
engineering goal was to create a wall or breakwater with regular courses, as in Heraeum and
Eutropius, a system of bombarding the seafloor with rock boxes would not necessarily have
produced the expected result.

In addition, the only known uses of offshore boxes for port construction in ancient times,
mentioned above and the two to be discussed below, were as forms for placing pozzolans, rather
than as containers for rubble. as a debris tractor is a possibility. On the other hand, its use as
formwork for the installation of hydraulic concrete is an archaeological certainty. In Caesarea,
the only place where his remains were found in situ, they were supposed to contain pozzolans,
not stones.

In 1990 Professors Avner Raban and R.L.Vann, co-directors of the Caesarea Old Port Excavation
Project, discovered another wooden box under the Caesarea Sea at the end of the South
Breakwater Dock. It had been used as scaffolding for a large concrete block, which served as a
foundation element whenever possible. Although this site had been examined many times by
CAHEP staff, a late spring storm this year unexpectedly had stirred at least six feet of sand from
the general area, exposing pieces of sand from the general area. first concrete foundation. During
the excavation along the concrete face, some of the formwork beams were exposed.
Fieldwork at this site continued in 1991 and 1992 under the direction of Avner Raban. A second
concrete block was discovered in 1990, on which parts of the wooden formwork were still in
place. Perhaps the base of the lighthouse was a concrete island built from blocks side by side or
in a different arrangement. Chris Brandon, the chief architect of the current underwater
investigation round, prepares a detailed report on the condition of this formwork and some
considerations on the transport of the concrete and pouring it into the sea at this point.

The newly discovered forms of Caesarea were literally wooden boxes or chests. In contrast to the
previously discussed hollow structures, both shapes discovered so far at the location of the
lighthouse had considerable stories. Herringbone joinery reflects contemporary shipbuilding
from the early Roman Empire. They had been built for travel with the precision of a merchant or
warship. To better describe these boxes, which neither Josephus mentions in his account of the
construction of the port of Caesarea nor Vitruvius in his section on the construction of ports in
Augustus, we should perhaps call them one-way boats. Prefabricated parts transported elsewhere
and for final assembly to Caesarea, after being partially filled with concrete, possibly to facilitate
hauling a large floating box with a high freeboard, they were brought to the locations by small
boats propelled by oars, at which it would be workers on an auxiliary boat or a floating work
station added additional liquid pozzolan to the formwork until it sank slowly and in a controlled
manner to its precise location. Parts of the upper part of the freeboard could have been reused
after the concrete had been set underwater, but excavations have shown the lower parts were left
on the seabed. Coincidental circumstances, including stabilizing the bottom of the frames with a
rubble pile, have preserved the wood over the centuries. If the chests described by Procopio were
in fact disposable barges or double-walled hollow forms for the installation of pozzolans, he had
provided a detailed description of their use that exactly matched the archaeological evidence
from Caesarea and valuable information not in the accounts available were the early Roman
imperial writers Josephus and Vitruvius. Although the details of the port of King Herod and the
date in this text are centuries apart, they complement each other very well and together give a
vivid picture of one of the most impressive engineering achievements of antiquity, the use of
hydraulic concrete on the open sea along an artificial port create exposed coast.

Five centuries before Justinian, Josephus commented with understandable praise and
astonishment on Herod's bold but successful attempts to conquer nature through the construction
of the port facility in Caesarea, the Bosporus. In many ways, the Byzantine emperor had
duplicated the Jewish king's maritime construction company. In this way, and with the other port
building techniques and design features discussed above, the engineering technology of Imperial
Rome had survived. In at least two places in the water of the Bosphorus, conformity with a
venerable tradition was preserved until the 6th century.