The Nabateans are a mystery to me.
There's a lot we don't know about them.
There's much more we don't know than we do.
[Josh] Enter Petra.
Everything you see here is carved.
Like, the scale of this place is unbelievable.
And this here is the most famous building of all.
[Pearce] We call it the Treasury.
It's one of the new New Seven Wonders of the World.
This is the most mysterious monument we have here.
We don't know the who, the what, the when.
We have none of that for this.
[Josh] Right. So this place will always be remembered
as the fictional resting place of the Holy Grail
in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
But in reality, its true purpose is unknown.
So how do we unravel the mystery
of one of the most famous buildings in the world?
If we're gonna understand this place,
we've got to get a glimpse of what's under us.
And to do that, we need technology.
[Josh] Got it.
What do you make of that?
[Josh] There is something there.
Some sort of chamber we've never seen before.
[man] "X" marks the spot.
Unbelievable.
Let's see what's down there.
Here at Petra, archeologist Pearce Paul Creasman
has been given exclusive permission
to dig beneath the Treasury for answers.
Here we go.
And so dig we did.
A team of workers moved tons of earth
to descend 12 feet beneath the courtyard of the Treasury.
And it turns out there's something down there.
[man] Josh, Pearce, get over here.
We found something.
Let's see what we got. Come on.
-[Josh] We got a lot more people here. -[Pearce] Yeah.
Oh, this looks very official.
[Josh] We're joined by the Director General
of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, Dr. Fadi Balawi.
Your Excellency, nice to meet you, sir.
-Lovely seeing you. -Yes.
Along with the Chief Commissioner of Petra, Dr. Fares Braizat.
And beneath us, a discovery.
So, what'd you find?
We think we have an entrance to something here.
-There's an opening there? -[man] There's an opening.
-[Josh] Where? -I can put my hand on this side.
Look at that. That's a doorway.
And it goes all the way to here as well.
And it's just got these big blocks in front of it?
Yeah, it's been sealed up.
Is that a tomb? What is that?
I mean, why do we have to wonder?
We should go down and see.
-Let's find out. -[man] Come on down.
I knew I liked this guy.
We're coming down.
Oh, my word. Can you see in there?
Wow.
I can't wait.
What is in there?
It is something really huge.
Is it empty? Is it-- Can you see anything?
-[Fadi] Ooh. -Is it a room? Does it go back?
It's a new tomb, I think.
[Josh] It is a tomb!
Oh, my God.
Also, there's another layer inside.
[Josh] This is insane.
[Pearce] So what are we waiting for, guys?
I think we should not wait anymore.
We should go in.
-You want to open it? -[Pearce] We gotta go in.
Definitely.
-Definitely. -Yes.
-[Fadi] Oh, wow. -Heavy, heavy, heavy, yeah?
Okay, I have it, I have it.
-[Fadi] Hold this, please. -Yup. Heavy, heavy.
I have it. Oh, I don't.
Oh, my word!
The past is all around us.
Oh, this is crazy.
A world of mystery...
-This is a plane? -[man] Yeah.
...danger...
We are about to be underwater.
Whoa!
...and adventure.
It's just straight down.
[grunting]
I travel to the far corners of the earth
to uncover where legends end
and history begins.
Yeah, let's punch it.
I'm Josh Gates.
And this is Expedition Unknown.
Are they graves, do you think?
I think they could be graves.
They're all partitioned off. Look at that.
I can hardly believe it.
We are peering into the darkness of an ancient tomb
discovered beneath the famed Treasury in Petra.
This is a city of enduring mysteries,
mysteries that I've traveled a long way to investigate.
To find out how its builders, the Nabateans, came to power
and what happened to their once-flourishing kingdom,
I made the trip here, through the winding slot canyon,
known as the Siq,
that has long concealed the entrance to Petra.
Always knew someday you'd come walking back through my door.
Oh, you even quote Raiders.
My old friend, archeologist Pearce Paul Creasman,
has been leading me on a journey through the sands of time.
Together, we visited remote cliffs,
where a clue was chiseled in stone
hundreds of feet above the desert floor.
We need to scan it.
[Josh] No.
It's a sheer cliff face, man.
After dangling by a thread and scanning the inscription,
we decoded the Nabatean origin story.
Nomads who filled a power vacuum in these vast deserts.
So here we are, centuries before Petra is really a thing...
-[Pearce] Yeah. -...and the Nabateans are on the scene.
[Pearce] Yes.
[Josh] At their first city of Sela,
they learned to shape the rock itself,
creating homes, tombs and chambers
to collect the most precious commodity of all, water.
This is a big part of the secret of the Nabateans' rise
is their ability to manage water.
[Josh] By the first century BC,
the Nabateans leveraged their skills
to become masters of the desert and a trade empire,
moving the rich resources of the ancient world
through one of the harshest environments on earth
and becoming fabulously wealthy.
And with that wealth, they built their capital at Petra,
a marvel of architecture and engineering
that was once home to tens of thousands of people.
The so called Rose City was hand carved
into the sandstone cliffs and canyons.
And that brings us back here,
to the iconic wonder known as the Treasury.
Was it a repository for riches,
a temple, a palace,
or a tomb for a Nabatean king?
The answers may lie beneath it in the chamber we've just discovered.
Look at that. It's all compartments.
They're all sectioned off.
[Pearce] It looks like a catacomb.
It does look like a catacomb.
[Pearce] Fadi, have you seen anything like that?
Never.
[Josh] Nothing, and I mean nothing like this
has ever been found in Petra.
In every other instance,
the Nabateans dug simple niches into cave walls,
or dug down into the bedrock.
But these raised slotted structures, this is unique.
[Fadi speaking]
Right. Most of these rooms you see,
-they're either flat floors... -[Fadi] Carve.
-...or they carve into the floors. -Yeah.
[Fadi] But this is something different.
They could be really solving all the issue about--
-The age of this. -The age of the Treasury
-and the function of the Treasury... -[Josh] Right.
...and the use of the Treasury.
And the Treasury is not only what we see above.
It could be a whole story that's linked to each other.
-Below? -Below.
[Josh] The dream would be to find human remains.
But it may be more of a fantasy.
That's because of the thousands of tombs
discovered in the heart of Petra,
nearly every single one of them was found empty,
looted or cleaned out long ago.
So, it smells musty as hell.
[Pearce] It's got that very distinctive tomb smell to it.
[Josh] Exactly. Right?
Probably that's mold.
[Josh] Mold, for homeowners, it's a headache.
For archeologists, it can be lethal.
So, after donning respirators,
we call for a ladder to access the chamber below.
Ladder's going down.
Are you ready?
[Pearce] I'm ready. I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna set the ladder,
and then everybody come down.
[Josh] Sounds good. Let's do it.
Pearce Paul takes the lead.
Once he disappears into the darkness, the rest of us follow.
Here we go.
But even before my eyes have time to adjust, there's a discovery.
[Fadi] Oh, my God!
[Josh] What is it?
[Fadi] Skeletons.
-[Josh] Skeletons? -[Fadi] Yes.
[Pearce] Oh, my God. Look at that.
There's bodies in here.
The bodies seem to be resting
in compartments created by these raised stone walls,
and they appear to be everywhere.
[Fadi] Another one there.
[Josh] Oh, another one right in front of it.
-[Fadi] It's a child. -[Josh] That's a child.
-[Fadi] It's a child. -[Josh] Oh, my word.
And another.
Another full skeleton. Look at that.
So you think this could be a family?
[Pearce] It has all the hallmarks of a family crypt.
We can take samples and check the DNA and see if they're related.
[Josh] What's in these other pits?
Do you think there's more?
[Pearce] I mean, there's only one way to find out.
[Josh] Let's see what's in the other chambers.
[Pearce] That's it.
-[Josh] More burials? -[Pearce] More burials.
I see at least...
At least three skulls.
This one's a little disturbed.
-[Josh] Three more skulls? -[Pearce] At least.
[Josh] Just look at the condition of this.
The entire individual is here with these offerings, whatever they are.
[Pearce] And there's more.
[Josh] How many individuals are in this room?
[Fadi] One, two, three, four.
[Pearce] At least 12.
I mean-- And if we-- When we excavate, we may find more.
[Josh] This is a momentous discovery.
The many tombs of Petra that line the canyon above are all empty now.
Yet, here is a massive burial chamber
hidden directly beneath the most famous building in the city.
There are at least a dozen bodies in this room.
Have you ever found a tomb with 12 burials in it?
-[Fadi] Never. -[Josh] Never?
-[Fadi] Never. -[Josh] This is unbelievable.
[Fadi] Well done, guys. Well done, well done.
-Well done. -[Josh] This is amazing.
-[Fares] Congratulations. -[Josh] Thank you.
-[Fares] Well done. -[Josh] What a thrill.
Oh, my word.
We're just starting now. We need to know who they are.
[Pearce] Well, now we gotta get to work.
[Pearce] This has been the easy part.
[Josh] Huh. This was the easy part?
-[Pearce] We're in. -[Josh] Oh, come on.
I'm living every archaeologist's dream,
excavating a newly-discovered tomb
beneath the Treasury in Petra.
One with something almost never found here,
actual human remains.
We're hoping they can help us fill in crucial missing details
about both the building above us
and the Nabatean people who carved it.
-How many people visit Petra a year? -[Fares] One million.
-[Josh] A million? -[Fares] Yes.
-[Josh] And they walk right above our heads. -[Fares] Exactly.
[Josh] And until this moment, nobody knew this was here.
-[Fadi] Never. -[Fares] No one knew this existed.
[Pearce] Now we have to photograph everything,
we have to measure everything,
we have to conserve, preserve.
And we have to present it for people to understand it.
[Josh] Right.
Okay, well, let's get to work.
Before anything can be disturbed,
it must all be documented.
Pearce Paul photographs the tomb.
Then archeologist Matthew Vincent deploys a 3D like a scanner.
The device emits pulses of laser light,
as many as two million per second.
The result, a remarkable digital topographic map
of both the entrance and the interior of the newly-found tomb.
Once it's complete, we're ready to get our hands dirty.
[Pearce] It's time to get into the excavation.
And we're gonna start here.
We're gonna stick close to the wall.
-We want to go to the far end... -[Josh] Uh-huh.
-...and then work our way back. -[Josh] Got it.
We very carefully drop down into the first pit
and gingerly excavate to see if anything was buried alongside these Nabateans.
These bones are just under this fine layer of dust that's settled in here.
But underneath them, look at that.
They just shine through.
There's a standalone skull in the corner, yes?
[Pearce] Look at this cut in the chin.
[Josh] There's a fracture in the bone.
[Pearce] It looks like there's a cut in the bone,
so somebody got a pretty good knock
-in their lifetime. -[Josh] Incredible.
[Pearce] But up here, we see these little black spots.
This is charcoal.
When they buried this person,
they buried them with something in a vessel
that had been burned.
[Josh] Would it have been some sort of burning your offering here?
[Pearce] Yes. So hopefully--
Ah, here it comes.
-[Josh] Pottery. -[Pearce] Starting to get some pottery.
[Josh] Look at that.
The fragments we're finding may not be big, but they're still invaluable
in narrowing down who this tomb once belonged to.
[Pearce] Really thin, really fragile,
-and Nabatean pottery. -[Josh] Oh, yeah.
Look at that. That's pottery.
While we don't yet know for sure,
Pearce Paul thinks the pottery might be early Nabatean,
which would place it in the first century BC.
And the unproven theory as to when the Treasury was built?
[Pearce] Something like 40 AD.
[Josh] So this could be nearly a century before that.
[Pearce] Yes. That is powerful for us
because a big part of this excavation
-is to understand what's going on in the Treasury. -[Josh] Right.
[Pearce] Because we don't have a lot of burials from Petra,
and we don't have a lot of early burials.
-[Josh] Right. -Even smaller fraction of them are the early ones.
-[Josh] Amazing. -[Pearce] So this is going to be great.
[Josh] It has been theorized, but never proven,
that the Treasury was built during the reign of a king named Aretas IV,
who ruled the Nabateans during their most prosperous era.
Earlier, while digging, we found a coin
dating to the time of his predecessor.
If this pottery ends up being dated to that same period,
it could help confirm the theory,
since the Treasury was built above this layer,
which means later in time.
[Pearce] If the Treasury wasn't there
when this was made,
these people are still really important people
because good real estate is good real estate.
This is an important location.
[Josh] We continue to delicately brush away the sand around the remains
to expose any artifacts buried with them.
So by this bone here, I've got what looks like
a piece of pottery right in here.
[Pearce] That's that really thin, fine early Nabatean pottery.
So here's what I don't see so far.
-I don't see jewelry. -[Josh] Right.
[Pearce] I don't see trinkets, personal adornments.
I don't see a lot of stuff.
[Josh] I mean, nothing.
[Pearce] And we see that as a pattern
recurring in early Nabatean burials, the lack of stuff.
[Josh] While this is proving to be one of the
largest collections of remains ever found at Petra,
discoveries at the Nabateans' other city of Hegra in Saudi Arabia
have shown that they were often buried
with layered shrouds
of leather and colorful fabric.
Both of which may have rotted away in our wet tomb.
In addition, small but stunning relics were found there,
including cones, and even a small camel in bronze.
But like here at Petra, the burials there were not packed with rich offerings.
Rather, it looked like the Nabateans seemed to believe
that you can't take it with you.
[Josh] So this looks like part of the spine here.
[Pearce] Yup. And you've got vertebrae.
-[Josh] These are ribs. -[Pearce] Yeah.
And under your right hand, you've got the collarbone, clavicle.
-[Josh] I mean, it looks like maybe an arm here, arm bone. -[Pearce] Yeah.
-Very clearly the chin there... -[Josh] Yeah.
...mandible, back of the ear.
[Josh] The arm is literally reaching out.
[Pearce] It's evocative, isn't it?
[Josh] It really is.
[Josh] I've got pottery here.
[Pearce] Yeah?
-Oh, good. -[Josh] It looks like the piece of a vessel.
[Pearce] Nice, nice.
[Josh] Oh, there's a base on it.
[Pearce] All right. So this is gonna be really helpful for us.
It's gonna tell us something about the time and place.
It's nice to have a couple of body shards.
But when we have the rims and the feet,
that's when we can get really precise,
compare it to existing cataloged information
and tell us a lot more about the time and place.
[Josh] That is incredible.
The Nabateans we're discovering here
are just beginning to speak to Pearce Paul.
But it turns out there are others waiting for that chance,
who may rank a little higher.
-Wow. -Hey, Pearce Paul.
The ambassador is here to see you.
[Josh] There's an ambassador?
[Pearce] Yeah, I invited the American ambassador.
[Josh] What-- Okay.
-[Yael] Hi. -Hello.
Really nice to meet you, Ambassador.
It's fantastic to meet you.
I've never met anybody in quite these conditions before.
This is incredible.
You know, you never know who you're gonna bump into at a tomb.
Meet Yael Lempert, the actual, no kidding,
US ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
It's really nice to meet you.
[Yael] It's a pleasure to meet you.
-Pleasure to meet you. -We're so excited to have you here.
I have a gift for you. You're probably gonna want one of these.
And as a true diplomat,
she's here to meet the new neighbors.
We waste no time escorting the ambassador into the tomb.
[Yael] Can I ask, do you think that these are kings and queens or nobles
who are buried here?
Given the location underneath the Treasury.
[Pearce] The people here mattered.
Were they kings and queens? I don't know.
[Josh] No question they must be
significant individuals to be here, you know?
I mean, where we are was prime real estate, still is prime real estate.
-[Yael] Absolutely. -[Josh] So it has to be somebody significant for sure.
[Pearce speaking]
[Josh] That's right. At least 12. At least 12.
-[Yael] Archeologists' humor. -[Josh] Yeah, exactly.
I have to say, in coming here,
my assumption was that we weren't going to to be looking at human remains.
I just thought that at Petra, that didn't happen.
[Pearce] It's exceedingly rare.
-[Yael] Truly once-in-a-lifetime. -[Pearce] Absolutely.
[Josh] Having been lucky enough
to visit famous archeological sites,
heritage sites around the world,
there really is nothing like Petra.
[Yael] And it keeps getting better and better
because there keep being finds like this.
And I'm so grateful for the work that Jordanian and American archeologists
and researchers are doing together
because it enables incredible discoveries like this.
It's just the latest chapter in the great partnership
between the United States and Jordan in archeology
and in preservation of Jordan's incredible cultural heritage.
-[Josh] Yeah. -[Pearce] It's a smorgasbord of archeology.
-[Yael] Yes. -[Josh] Yeah, that's right.
-A lifetime of work to be done. -[Yael] Yes.
-[Pearce] You better get to work. -[Yael] Yeah.
What are you guys doing?
-Come on. Stop slacking off. -[Josh] Sorry, Ambassador.
Back to work, back to work.
The ambassador takes her leave,
and we return to the excavation
until the sun sets behind the canyon walls.
The team doesn't want to stray too far from this important discovery,
so I'm offered yet another once-in-a-lifetime experience,
an invitation to camp in front of the Treasury with the local Bedouin tribe.
First of all, thank you so much for this.
It's incredible.
An amazing place to spend the night.
[tribesman speaking]
[Josh] The Bedouins are, in many ways,
the cultural descendants of the Nabateans,
and they have been living and working in Petra for centuries.
For that reason, the site has never been truly abandoned.
And how long have you lived here?
You're-- You're 75 years?
You look amazing.
Is Petra very different today than when you were young?
-[tribesman speaking] -It must be a different world.
[tribesman speaking]
You like it better now or then?
-Yeah? Why? -[tribesman speaking]
[Josh] We continue the conversation
over a home-cooked lamb dinner
fit for a Nabatean king.
I like the Bedouin life. This is nice.
I am a Bedouin.
-Honorary Bedouin. -[tribesman] Yeah. Yeah.
[Josh] This is a complete stranger
who has given us sumptuous food
and a safe place to sleep for the night,
a tradition that he has passed on to the next generations.
How many children do you have?
I'm afraid to ask this. How many grandchildren?
[Josh] Whoo!
-Well, yes, they're all related to you. -[tribesman] Yeah.
You know, after this wonderful meal,
we're gonna sleep easy tonight.
I know. We're going to sleep very easy.
Ah, you will.
-Well, thank you very much again. Shukran. -Welcome.
[Josh] Thank you.
There is truly no hospitality like Bedouin hospitality.
It is a point of cultural pride,
and one that I'm grateful to benefit from
as we drift asleep in the shadow of the ancients.
As soon as the sun rises, though,
we're back digging in the tomb.
Now that we've exposed most of the skeletons,
our plan is to brush around them,
looking for any burial offerings.
Look at this skeleton.
It's incredible. It looks really complete.
So, legs here.
Looks like the feet are missing.
[Pearce] Just-- It's so delicate.
[Josh] Yeah, you can hardly even dust it.
The bone is just so fragile.
Oh, my God. Look at this.
-Do you see this? -[Pearce] I do see this.
[Josh] Is that a vessel?
[Pearce] It looks like something there.
[Josh] I can't believe I'm saying this,
but that looks exactly like the Grail from Last Crusade.
I can't believe I'm saying this,
-but that looks like the cup of a carpenter. -[Pearce chuckles]
It does. Admit that it looks just like it.
[Pearce] It looks exactly like it.
[Josh] The Treasury in Petra is world famous
as the resting place for the Holy Grail
in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
And up until about ten seconds ago,
I was sure that was just a movie.
It's just such a coincidence
-that directly underneath the Treasury... -[Pearce] Uh-huh.
-...the building from Last Crusade. -Yeah, yeah.
You know what everybody's gonna think?
-We planted it. -[Josh] I know. We did not put this here.
-[Pearce] It belongs in a museum. -[Josh laughs]
[Josh] Jokes aside, this is an important find.
With so few precious objects found in the Nabataean burials here at Petra,
it needs to be preserved.
[Pearce] So I'm gonna brush a little bit more around the edges here.
-It's already loose, I can feel it shifting. -[Josh] Okay.
So we're going to take it, we're gonna put it in a bucket over there of sand.
[Josh] We delicately clear the sand around the ceramic before we attempt to move it.
[Pearce] It's ready to come out.
[Josh] Okay, here we go.
Nice and easy.
[Josh exclaims]
Look at that. [exclaims]
Beautiful.
[Pearce] All right. Careful as we go.
-[Josh] We're taking this outside to photograph, yes? -[Pearce] Yeah.
-[Josh] There's one problem with that. -[Pearce] What's that?
The Grail cannot pass beyond the Great Seal.
[Pearce] It's not the Grail!
That is the boundary, Pearce.
That is the price of immortality.
All right, sorry, let's take it out of here.
It looks a lot like the Grail.
In truth, the piece of ceramic is actually the top half of a larger jug.
The most complete piece of pottery we've found in the tomb so far.
And while it's doing a great impression of the Holy Grail,
Pearce Paul believes it may be about a century older than Jesus.
While this and the other ceramics we've been finding
look like they may be early Nabataean,
Pearce Paul needs to get a more specific date.
Fortunately, there is an incredible technology
that may be able to do just that.
So he's called in Dr. Timothy Kinnaird,
research officer with Scotland's
St. Andrew's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
-[Josh] Hi there. -[Pearce] Hi.
Hi, it's good to see you, Tim.
[Pearce] Josh, this is Tim Kinnaird.
-[Josh] How are you? Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you too.
He's gonna help us understand this better.
Okay. So, Tim, tell us
what you're gonna do.
Optically stimulated luminescence?
That sounds risque.
-[Tim] That is correct. -[Josh] What is it?
-How? -[Pearce] He's a witch.
Yeah, exactly.
Every grain of sand and soil in the tomb contains particles of quartz.
And when these particles become deposited in the earth,
they begin to accumulate faint amounts of radiation.
OSL measures the radiation and can pinpoint almost exactly
when a soil sample was last exposed to light.
Which in this case, would give us the age of the burial.
So we're just gonna take a few soil samples?
[Josh] And he does mean completely.
Exposing the samples to even a small amount of light
will reset the clock on them and make the entire experiment worthless, so...
-We have to be in complete darkness? -[Tim speaking]
[Pearce] The way it was intended.
Yeah, sure. Just seal us in here with 12 dead bodies.
Okay, sounds scary. Here we go.
So that this advanced tech can unlock the date of this ancient tomb,
Pearce Paul's team brings in tarps to seal the entrance,
and we power down our camera's bright lights.
[Tim speaking]
Yep. This will not affect the sample?
[Josh] Got it.
There we go, good sample from way underneath.
[Josh] Little glints of light off that quartz.
-[Pearce] Irradiated quartz. -That's right.
[Josh] Okay, so we have our samples?
[Josh] Got it.
Tim seals up his samples for a trip back to his lab,
where he'll get the results in a few weeks' time,
hopefully pinpointing the age of the burial.
But just as one scientist leaves, another enters.
Dicky Bates, the geophysicist whose scan first located the subterranean chamber
in which we're working.
[Josh] Well, good news. Your radar works.
Wow, that is unbelievable.
[Josh] Pearce Paul hasn't just called Dicky down here for a victory lap.
He has one more job for him.
Something about this tomb, it's not sitting right with me.
Virtually every other burial we find here is cut into the bedrock.
I wanna see why they chose to build walls.
Why didn't they cut into the floor?
There's no reason to go to all of this effort.
-This is an immense effort to build all these walls. -[Josh] Yeah.
[Pearce] There's something else going on that we should know.
-Is there some big crack running through here? -[Josh] Right.
This tomb is unique in Petra.
Every other tomb found to date has been carved into rock.
Actual partitioning walls constructed from the floor up
have never been seen here before.
And he wants to know why.
You know, there's gotta be some explanation
-for doing this atypical thing. -[Dicky] Yep.
[Josh] To see if there's something beneath the burials,
Pearce Paul wants Dicky to scan again.
This time, inside the tomb itself.
Okay, do you have enough room to work in here?
-Well, it's not ideal, but let's give it a shot. -[Josh] Okay, let's try it.
Dicky preps the GPR unit.
Though space is tight, the scanner should be able
to see up to 20 feet down into the ground.
[Dicky] Hey, guys, come and have a look at this.
-[Josh] You got something? -[Dicky] Yeah, now.
Wow.
So here, look at that.
What the hell is that?
Yes?
[Dicky] Rock, rock, rock.
And then what does that look like?
Wait, what the hell is that?
It's exactly the same signature as we saw when we found this tomb.
It's a void.
It's a void and it's 12 feet beneath us.
[Josh] A GPR scan inside the newly discovered tomb
beneath Petra's iconic Treasury building,
is giving Geophysicist Dicky Bates a serious case of deja vu.
[Pearce] You know, the exact same distance between that and up.
Are you saying there's another level here?
Hey, the geophysics was right last time,
and this time it's indicating we've got more below here.
[Josh] This is a sensational development.
We've discovered that here, 12 feet beneath the Treasury, is a long lost tomb.
And now 12 feet deeper, there may well be another.
So the reason they didn't cut down into the floor
is 'cause there's something down there.
Because there's something else going on.
So we're not even done in here, and the mysteries of Petra continue.
And also, if this is another level of tombs,
think about what that could mean for the rest of this site.
I mean, it might go down that far everywhere.
[Pearce] It very well could.
Look, we know in some places, just standing out on the surface here,
-you can just barely see the tops of doors. -[Josh] Right.
-How deep it goes? Nobody knows yet -[Josh] Right.
We've known for ages that there's a dearth of information
-about the early Nabataean world. -[Josh] Yes.
We saw a glimpse of them at Sela, we get a glimpse of them in a text.
But it goes centuries without any real, meaningful information.
And then it just seems like Petra arrives out of nowhere.
[Pearce] Absolutely. So probably we just haven't gotten deep enough yet.
Right. That whole story of the Nabataeans who would, in time, build this treasury
could be right under our feet.
-[Pearce] Certainly the beginnings of it. -[Josh] Yeah.
So see everybody here this time next year?
-[Josh] Yeah. -[Dicky] Got a deal.
Dude. Amazing.
-As always, Dicky, a pleasure. -[Dicky] A pleasure.
[Pearce] Glad we got you around, Bates.
[Josh] Future excavations will have to tackle the level below our feet.
But as for the mysterious tomb we're standing in now,
we have to wait for the results of Dr. Kinnaird's OSL test
to confirm its age, which may shed light on the Treasury above.
While we wait, I'm left wondering
about the most important mystery of all.
Namely what happened to the Nabataean civilization that built Petra?
Where did they go?
To seek the answer, I leave Pearce Paul and stride further into the ancient city.
While the Treasury is the most famous building at Petra,
it's not the only one revealing the secrets of the Nabataeans.
High up on a ridge just at the edge of town is another structure.
One that may reveal the fate of the city's builders.
Waiting in an epic ruin is Archeologist Matthew Vincent.
This is something different.
Well, we try to keep you on your toes.
What is this place?
Welcome to the Petra Church.
-The Petra Church? -[Matthew] Yeah.
Okay. Now, if memory serves, the Nabataeans were not Christian.
They were around pre-Christianity being a thing.
Exactly, so the Nabataeans are here well before Christianity.
Right.
The Nabataeans were the most potent force in this region for hundreds of years,
but nothing lasts forever.
In 106 AD, the growing Roman Empire annexed the Nabataeans
in a bloodless takeover that ended their autonomy.
And then, something spectacularly bad happened.
A massive earthquake happens here in 363 AD.
How massive?
It's basically the end of the Nabataeans.
Really? The city is just destroyed?
Totally destroyed.
[Josh] Once the Romans convert their empire to Christianity in 380 AD,
new building projects take on a decidedly different focus.
So we can imagine that when they come back and they rebuild here,
they rebuild Christian places.
Right, all the pagan temples are tumbled down and destroyed,
and so when Petra gets rebuilt, it's a Christian town.
And they just build church after church after church.
Okay, and so this one is built when?
It started in the 5th century.
And we have these really beautiful mosaics all over the floor.
These are awesome.
[Matthew] There are some fantastic mosaics.
And these are what? Animals?
[Matthew] Yeah, we've got a lot of animals,
we've got depictions of daily life as well.
But the animals are just fantastic here.
But you know, it's not just these mosaics that you're seeing here.
One of the most amazing things we found
is literally just in that corner over there.
[Josh] And what was found there?
The largest the cache of writing in the entire area of Petra.
One-hundred-and-forty scrolls found in that back corner over there.
Wow, that's amazing. Because there is virtually nothing written here, right?
A handful of inscriptions that have been found across the entire site.
-[Josh] And that's it? -And that's it.
And what's on them?
Well, that's the problem right there.
Can you not read the language?
Oh, no, it's all in Greek.
Okay, right, that would have been the administrative language at the time.
-[Matthew] Exactly. -So, the problem is what?
This entire church was destroyed
-in the 7th century through a fire. -[Josh] Uh-huh.
[Matthew] Those scrolls got cooked.
-[Josh] They got toasted. -[Matthew] Yeah.
Okay, so were they destroyed?
A process of what's called carbonization.
Imagine you just barbecue them. They're smoked scrolls.
Right, they don't fall apart, but they're just kind of briquettes.
Miraculously, though, some of the 140 scrolls survived the fire
and were actually able to be unrolled and read.
They're mostly legal texts.
They describe contracts, wills, inheritance, just parts of daily life.
Which is still hugely valuable, right?
It's incredible.
What we can understand about Petra in the 5th, 6th, 7th centuries
-is all thanks to these scrolls. -[Josh] Right.
But many of the scrolls were too burned to be legible.
The charred texts were reduced to fragments,
layers of papyrus fused by heat and smoke.
If we could read more of these scrolls,
we could really begin to understand what became of the Nabataeans,
what became of their world.
And at this moment, we have a team
that are actually trying to read these scrolls.
How do you read burned scrolls?
With some really serious technology.
[Josh] The answer to the Nabataeans' final mystery
may lie in the remains of the scrolls from Petra.
So I bid a fond farewell to the desert
and fly to where they're currently being studied.
Six thousand miles away in, of all places, Lexington, Kentucky.
No, really. You know, the place with the bourbon and the horses.
It's also home to the University of Kentucky's
state of the art EduceLab,
which is where I meet the professor that's been leading the team
analyzing the most damaged Petra scroll fragments, Brent Seales.
Josh, let me introduce you to the Petra papyri.
-[Josh] This is them? -[Brent] This is them.
[Josh] Wow, look at that.
We have some varieties here, but here's a piece that is especially delicate.
Take a look.
So this is an actual fragment of papyrus from Petra.
-This is at least 1,500 years old? -Yeah.
Oh, my word.
This is about as fragile as the wings of a butterfly.
-Right, just thousands of tiny flakes. -[Brent] Thousands.
If I saw this on the ground, I would ignore it.
I mean, it looks like a piece of bark, almost.
You can't really see that there's writing there.
-It's really hard to see with the naked eye. -Yeah, not at all.
You're telling me there's writing on that?
There's writing on almost every one of these fragments, yeah.
[Josh] And we are lucky enough to see how Professor Seales
is deciphering what's written on them.
He prepares the next two fragments for analysis.
One the size of a postage stamp, the other of a grain of rice.
The experimental process that he's developed
begins with a visual analysis under a microscope
that's a wee bit more powerful than the ones in your high school bio lab.
Ooh! Is that writing?
[Brent] That's writing.
[Josh] That's ink? Right there?
[Brent] That is ink.
This fragment is actually made up of multiple layers all stuck together.
Wow, and there could be writing on all of those layers?
[Brent] Could be writing on all of them,
but we can only see the top ones, right?
Right, so we're gonna need more tech than this.
[Brent] Yeah.
[Josh] The second fragment is minuscule by comparison to the first,
so Brent makes a minor adjustment.
[Brent] Look at that. That's probably...
I would think that's maybe half of a Delta if this is Greek.
That fragment is like the size of an ant.
And yet, there's writing on it.
This is like the ultimate jigsaw puzzle.
It's terrifically difficult.
[Josh] Difficult is an understatement.
Next, Brent brings our two fragments to a different station
for an X-ray fluorescence spectrum analysis.
This test will break down the specific elements
used for the ink inside the fused scroll,
which will then tell Brent how to read it.
So we're gonna shoot X-rays of this thing. Is that right?
That's right.
This allows us to map composition of our sample.
Elemental composition across a wide area.
So should I stand back from this thing?
No, you're safe enough out here on the other side of the steel.
Yeah, that's what they all say, and then...
"Hulk smash."
Here we go.
[beeps]
So now we're scanning across the scroll's surface.
[Josh] In short order, the work is done.
So our scan's complete,
and you can see we have our map encompassing the entire fragment.
[Josh] And the areas we previously identified as writing
are particularly revealing.
The beautiful result there is it correlates really well with lead.
-Lead. Okay, so this ink has lead in it. -Mm-hmm.
And is that good news in terms of the work
that you wanna do with these fragments?
No.
It's great news, actually.
-Really? -Yeah.
Yeah, because lead is very dense.
In fact, you'll see these X-ray machines are shielded with lead.
Right.
So it gives you the ability to see the ink using X-ray,
-unlike pretty much any other element. -[Josh] Wow.
I mean, it's a fantastic result.
[Josh] Wow, okay.
Lead is the ideal ink base for this process,
which will help us reveal the writing
not only on the outer layers of the fragment,
but the ones hidden beneath as well.
The next step from here is to use X-ray
that penetrates all the way through,
and, in fact, not just two-dimensional X-ray, but 3D X-ray.
We call it tomography.
-[Josh] Tomography? -Yeah.
Okay, you got a machine for that?
Oh yeah, we have a big machine for that.
Josh, meet the Phoenix.
Okay, how powerful are those X-rays?
Well, they can go through metal, rock, an engine block.
-Me? -You, easily.
-Anything? -Anything.
Okay.
The scroll fragments are placed in a special mount
to keep them rock steady as the machine works
and then Brent secures the shielded door.
Okay, we're gonna fire the X-ray.
[Michael] Our detector is live.
This is a live X-ray image?
And there's our sample holder. And our fragment is in here somewhere, yes?
Yes, the shadow you can see is sort of outlined right there.
[Josh] Okay.
As they rotate, the samples are bombarded with X-rays
from two powerful emitters.
The Phoenix creates thousands of X-ray snapshots from every angle,
which will be combined to form 3D models of the scroll fragments.
If everything works as it should,
the end result will allow us to virtually separate
the individual layers of papyrus,
revealing lost writing from Petra recorded 1,500 years ago.
[beeps]
After a matter of minutes, we gather around a workstation to view the results.
Okay, moment of truth. You ready?
-Sure. -[Josh] Let's see what we got.
Let's take a look at the model.
Oh, look at that!
That is incredible.
And that's fully manipulatable?
Yeah, so we can rotate and see it from all angles.
[Josh] That's insane.
Professor Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky has just performed
a state of the art scan of rare fragments
from a charred scroll from the ancient city of Petra.
We're hoping his new technique will allow us to virtually peel apart
the fragment's layers for the first time.
So, yeah, you can see the fibers.
If I circle around, we come to the other side.
You can see a unique pattern on the other side.
Right. And this here, is this ink?
[Brent] Yeah, that's ink.
-[Josh] This is writing right here? -That's writing.
[Josh] That's really wild.
So now if we look at the smaller fragment,
which we can peel back and look at the inner layers...
[Josh] Right.
The top layer matches exactly what we saw
in the optical microscope and in the XRF.
Right, we have this kind of, you know, part of a letter here maybe.
-Peel that away and you can see the other piece-- -[Josh] That's underneath it?
[Brent] That's underneath, that's a hidden layer, yeah.
-That's a hidden layer with ink that's not visible? -That's right.
-To the naked eye? -Yeah.
So nobody has laid eyes on this part of this fragment or that ink, that writing,
in over a millennium.
It would be impossible.
[Josh] This is a huge win.
We've been able to separate the layers of a scroll
that were literally fused together by fire
and read the ink on multiple layers.
We are the first people to look at it right now.
That's time travel right there.
It is, and if you think about putting together an entire row of text
and then an entire page,
we will be the first people to read that.
[Josh] The fragments we've deciphered here are consistent with others
that Brent has run through this new process.
The results can already help us learn more
about the fate of the Nabataeans
after being absorbed by the Roman and then Byzantine Empire.
So let's talk about what's on these fragments. What are we seeing here?
This is Greek. It's the official language of the Byzantine Empire.
It's what they were using, this is not unexpected.
What is surprising is that there are Greek translations Of Arabic and Aramaic names
in that Greek-written language.
[Josh] This discovery means that the Nabataean language, a distinct dialect of Aramaic,
was still in use hundreds of years
after the fall of the Nabataean kingdom.
So even though what we're seeing in these fragments is Greek,
they are clearly translating these other languages
that are presumably then being used still in this place.
That's right, they haven't left those languages behind.
-They've translated those names into Greek. -Right.
And so you can see the influence of all three of those languages.
Greek, Aramaic, and Arabic.
[Josh] Far from being crushed by their conquerors,
Nabataean language and culture appear to have endured later into history.
We often ask this question,
"What happened to the Nabataeans? Where did they go?"
But it seems like maybe they haven't gone anywhere,
they're just part of the new culture.
[Brent] Yes, what tells the story is the language.
It's the crossroads, and you can see it in the language.
Right, we're seeing the people themselves in this writing.
That's right.
And the Nabataeans and their language is still a part of that.
Yep, absolutely.
[Josh] And they remain with us today.
Nabataean Aramaic developed into modern Arabic,
which is not only spoken by 400 million people,
but produced the system of numbers that you and I still use today.
So every time you count to... well, anything,
we have the Nabataeans to thank for it.
The ink doesn't lie?
It does not.
[Josh] At their height, the Nabataeans flourished
because of their skills at survival.
They were, after all, a people able to turn the desert green.
Now, after examining these scroll fragments from Petra,
we see evidence that the Nabataeans' culture was just as resilient.
Even today, their language, their mastery of the desert, and their traditions
can be seen in the Bedouins that still call Petra home.
As for the city's original residents,
we now have the results of Dr. Kinnaird's optically stimulated luminescence test.
He was able to confirm that the burial under the Treasury
was likely from the first half of the 1st century BC.
We also now have results on the pottery which is dated to the exact same time.
This means the Treasury above must have been built after this time period,
likely coinciding with the reign of the powerful Nabataean king, Aretas IV.
This is the strongest evidence yet of the Treasury's true age.
And there's more...
Surveys of the tomb show that it is perfectly aligned with the entrance to the Siq.
This is a clear indication that our tomb was built for an important family.
And quite possibly, a royal one.
This points to one distinct possibility for the Treasury's purpose.
As the lavish final resting place of King Aretas IV.
Two thousand years later, though,
it is a monument not to a single man,
but to an entire lost civilization,
which, it turns out, isn't so lost after all.
So if you make your way to Petra, and you should,
be sure to look up at the stunning rock-carved ruins,
but also down because just beneath your feet,
more answers and more wonders are just waiting to be found.