The Euphrates Tunnel was a legendary

tunnel A tunnel is an underground or undersea passageway. It is dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, or laid under water, and is usually completely enclosed except for the two portals common at each end, though there may be access and ve ...

purportedly built under the river

Euphrates The Euphrates ( ; see #Etymology, below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of West Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (). Originati ...

to connect the two halves of the city of

Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

. The first tunnel known definitively to have been built underwater was the

Thames Tunnel The Thames Tunnel is a tunnel beneath the River Thames in London, connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping. It measures wide by high and is long, running at a depth of below the river surface measured at high tide. It is the first tunnel known t ...

, completed in 1841.

History

A description of the tunnel as being built and used by Queen

Semiramis Semiramis (; ''Šammīrām'', ''Šamiram'', , ''Samīrāmīs'') was the legendary Lydian- Babylonian wife of Onnes and of Ninus, who succeeded the latter on the throne of Assyria, according to Movses Khorenatsi. Legends narrated by Diodorus ...

is given by

Diodorus Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily (; 1st century BC) was an ancient Greek historian from Sicily. He is known for writing the monumental universal history '' Bibliotheca historica'', in forty books, fifteen of which survive intact, b ...

(

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

50 BCE) in the ''

Bibliotheca Historica ''Bibliotheca historica'' (, ) is a work of Universal history (genre), universal history by Diodorus Siculus. It consisted of forty books, which were divided into three sections. The first six books are geographical in theme, and describe the h ...

'':

Philostratus Philostratus or Lucius Flavius Philostratus (; ; 170s – 240s AD), called "the Athenian", was a Greek sophist of the Roman imperial period. His father was a minor sophist of the same name. He flourished during the reign of Septimius Severus ...

(d. 250 CE) also describes the tunnel's construction in the ''

Life of Apollonius of Tyana ''Life of Apollonius of Tyana'' (), also known by its Latin title , is a text in eight books written in Ancient Greece by Philostratus (c. AD 170 – c. AD 245). It tells the story of Apollonius of Tyana (c. AD 15 – c. AD 100), a Pythagorean ph ...

'':

Construction

Construction allegedly began with a temporary dam across the

, and proceeded using a "

cut and cover A tunnel is an underground or undersea passageway. It is dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, or laid under water, and is usually completely enclosed except for the two portals common at each end, though there may be access and ve ...

" technique. The tunnel allegedly spanned 12 feet high and 15 feet wide. It is presumed that it was used by pedestrians and horse driven chariots and connected a major temple with the royal palace on the other shore of the river. It was supposedly lined with brick and

waterproof Waterproofing is the process of making an object, person or structure waterproof or water-resistant so that it remains relatively unaffected by water or resists the ingress of water under specified conditions. Such items may be used in wet env ...

ed with

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

References

{{reflist Pedestrian tunnels Ancient history of transport Tunnels in Iraq Babylonian art and architecture Babylon Crossings of the Euphrates