The First Bridge over the Bosphorus

This month’s topic is the first bridge built across the Bosphorus in the 5th century BC by the Ionians and Aeolians using their long, slender 50-oared ships. The bridge connecting the two continents was built by Persian King Darius I for his campaign against the Scythians, probably in 513 or 512 BC, by the Samos architect Mandrokles. Most of the information comes from the historian Herodotus, who lived during the same period, and from the inscriptions on the monuments built by Darius I.

It was the first permanent bridge built by Mandrokles across the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul. The second permanent bridge built across the Bosphorus Strait, excluding the temporary ship bridge constructed by Heraclius I (610-641 AD) upon his return from the Sassanid campaign, was the Bosphorus Bridge built in 1973.

The first bridge was built at the narrowest point of the strait, between the Temple of Zeus Ourios, where the strait meets the Black Sea, and Byzantion, right in the middle of the two. The bridge was approximately 760 meters (4 stadia) long. According to the Persian system of administration, 200 long, narrow ships collected from the Persian satraps of Anatolia, especially the satraps of the city-states of Ionia and Aeolis, were connected to each other with iron hooks, leaving small gaps between them for small boats to pass through. The ships were secured to the shore with ropes made of flax, hemp, and papyrus. Mandrokles of Samos took advantage of the double-flow current in the strait. In the strait, he arranged the ships side by side in parallel with the flow of water from the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea at a speed of approximately four nautical miles per hour in the upper layer, and in order for the ships to withstand this current and the occasional strong winds, he suspended cages filled with large rocks from the ships with ropes so that they could reach the lower waters flowing from the Marmara Sea to the Black Sea at similar speeds in the lower layer of the strait. In this way, a permanent bridge was built that greatly impressed Darius I and would be used again in accordance with his orders after the war.

Darius greatly admired the bridge, which had been built in a short time, and rewarded the architect Mandrokles by giving him ten times the amount that would normally have been given as a reward. Mandrokles wanted his work to be immortalized in a painting, so he spent the reward money on a painter. The painter depicted the bridge with the Persian army crossing it, and in the place of honor in the painting, he drew King Darius I sitting on his throne.

According to Herodotus, before presenting the painting to the Temple of Hera on the island of Samos, Mandrokles wrote underneath it:

“Mandrokles built the bridge that rules the waves in the fish-filled Bosporus.

He had this painting made for the Temple of Hera. Let it be hung on the wall. For

(Mandrokles) successfully implemented Darius’ plans, thereby exalting both his own

and Samos’ honor.”

King Darius I had two large marble columns erected on the shore where the bridge connected to the Anatolian side. One of the two columns Herodotus saw, which recount the Scythian campaign, has an inscription in Assyrian, while the other has an inscription in Greek. However, the columns were moved to the city (Byzantion) by the Byzantines, and the column with the Greek inscription was used as building material for the altar of the goddess Artemis Orthosia. The cuneiform (Assyrian) column was set aside for the Temple of Dionysus. In the inscription, Darius I recorded the names of all the peoples who provided soldiers to his army, as well as the number of soldiers and ships. According to Herodotus’ account of the inscription, the Persian army, including cavalry, consisted of 700,000 soldiers who crossed the ship bridge, and the fleet consisted of 600 ships.

When the Persian king Darius I reached the Danube (Istros/Danuvius) River for his Scythian campaign, he crossed his army over the ship bridge that had been built in advance by the tyrants who commanded the Greek fleet, with whom he had made an agreement during his preparations for war. He assigned the tyrants the task of protecting the bridge and its surroundings on the border of Scythian territory. As a result of the Scythians’ strategic tactics of winning without fighting, Darius I fled, and thanks to those among the tyrants who did not want to lose their power, the ship bridge, which had been destroyed only on the Scythian side, was repaired, and the Persian army left Scythian territory.

King Darius I, returning from the Scythian war, which ended in defeat but was reported to his people as a victory, crossed the Dardanelles (Hellespont) to the Anatolian coast by ship from the port of Sestos via Gallipoli (Khersonessos) instead of the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul.

According to Herodotus, approximately 33 years later, the Persian king’s son Xerxes had the first ship bridge built across the Dardanelles Strait for his campaign against Hellas (the Greek city-states). We will write about this topic in one of our future newsletters.

Mehmet Ali KAYA and Aytun YAZGI, 2021 “Darius’ Campaign Against the Scythians: An Assessment of Its Cause, History, and Process” Cedrus, Vol. IX, pp. 131-150. (cedrus.akdeniz.edu.tr) Excerpt from the article. We extend our gratitude to the authors.

With contributions from Nalan Yüksel…