Initially the site was excavated sporadically, but in 2000, was flooded during construction of the
Birecik Dam. With only a fraction of the site excavated, archaeologists feared that many mosaics would be permanently lost. After reading about it in
The New York Times, and with only few months left, American philanthropist
David W. Packard donated USD 5 million to fund an emergency excavation of the archaeological site, allowing archaeologists to preserve the mosaics that would otherwise be inundated by the dam. The mosaics that were excavated were initially stored at the
Gaziantep Museum, and are nowadays displayed at the
Zeugma Mosaic Museum. Zeugma has been on the UNESCO World Heritage Site tentative list since 2012. Extant archaeological remains at the site include "the Hellenistic Agora, the Roman Agora, two sanctuaries, the stadium, the theatre, two bathhouses, the Roman legionary base, administrative structures of the Roman legion, the majority of the residential quarters, Hellenistic and Roman city walls, and the East, South and West necropoles." Three large glass mosaics were discovered at Zeugma in 2014, including one depicting the nine
Muses. The Zeugma Mosaic Museum attracted a record 340,569 visitors in 2019, according to the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry. ==Gallery==