[narrator] Ancient Iraq.
A land of myth and legend.
Home to some of the greatest cities of the Bible.
It's the cradle of civilization.
It is one of the most important areas in the world.
[narrator] Now after decades of war,
pioneering archaeologists are returning to Iraq.
Our cameras have unprecendented access,
as they unearth buried treasures,
and discover the real world of the Old Testament.
Western civilization only kept memories through the Bible.
I think it's very difficult
to pick apart the myths and the legends.
[narrator] This time,
archaeologists uncover two superpowers
of the ancient world.
Nineveh and Babylon.
[Osama] Nebuchadnezzar wanted to make Babylon
the greatest city on Earth.
[narrator] How did the epic struggle
between these two infamous cities
shape the ancient world?
And why do we know them from the Bible
as cities of sin?
Iraq. The cradle of civilization.
2,500 years ago,
two great cities and their empires
dominated this ancient land.
Babylon and its great rival, Nineveh.
Babylon lies in central Iraq,
on the banks of the River Euphrates.
Nineveh sits much further north,
beneath the banks of the modern city of Mosul.
According to the Bible,
both cities were sinful places,
ruled by tyrants
who were brought down by the wrath of God.
But is there another side to these stories?
The Bible was a potent vehicle of memories
which were re-worked and traded as you wish,
but that was the only connection
until the first travellers
started telling people back in Europe what they saw.
They were reflecting on
these clearly massive ruins in front of your eyes.
And so myths were recreated.
[narrator] Nineveh is the oldest of the two cities.
It was founded by a people called the Assyrians.
The Bible says that Nineveh was a vast metropolis,
so large it took three days to walk across it.
The walls stretched for miles,
protecting grand palaces and temples.
So, how much of this is true?
Was Nineveh as big as the story describes?
Engineers rebuilt key sections
of Nineveh's once mighty ramparts
in the 1970s,
based on what they would have looked like.
But today, little remains.
In 2014, Islamic State tried to erase
the ancient city's ruins from existence.
Khaireddine Nasser is the Head of Antiquities in Mosul.
He and his team are determined to rebuild what was lost,
and discover the true scale of this ancient city.
[speaking Arabic]
[narrator] Khaireddine investigates a huge structure
called the Shamash Gate.
It's one of the few sections of Nineveh's city walls
that survived the destruction.
[speaking Arabic]
[narrator] Our cameras have been granted rare access
to the Iraqi team,
as it explores this lost wonder.
Here at the Shamash Gate,
Islamic State looters dug this tunnel
underneath the ruins,
hunting for hidden treasures to sell on the black market.
Engineers must fill it in
to prevent the whole structure from collapsing.
[Khaireddine speaking Arabic]
[narrator] The archaeological repair work
is also an opportunity to discover more
about the size of the ancient city.
Nineveh was so big it needed many entrances.
On the other side of Mosul
lie the remains of the Mashki Gate.
Here, Fadhel Mohamad Khodr
and a team from the University of Pennsylvania
hope to uncover its foundations.
[speaking Arabic]
[narrator] This image taken before the destruction
shows how the reconstructed Mashki Gate used to look.
It was a miniature fortress,
more than 80 feet high and 80 feet wide.
[Fadhel speaking Arabic]
[narrator] So, how large was this city?
Archaeologist, Nicolo Marchetti,
from the University of Bologna,
belongs to an Iraqi-Italian team at Nineveh.
He uses drone technology
backed up by excavations on the ground
to piece together the city's layout.
What you see here is a representation
of the elevations.
We call it a digital elevation model.
[narrator] Ancient inscriptions reveal
how Nineveh had more than a dozen gates.
[Nicolo] The earlier texts speak of 13, 14 gates.
And then the number grows until 18.
But until now, only five of them
have been known archaeologically.
[narrator] Incredibly, archaeologists are still finding more.
We were very lucky in 2021 to identify a new gate here,
almost halfway between the river
and the Shamash Gate.
And we just started excavation here.
[narrator] The aerial survey reveals
how the city was surrounded by fortified walls
nearly 7.5 miles long.
[Nicolo] The main defensive wall was 35 meters thick.
And minimum today,
it's preserved to a height of 15 meters.
But of course, it was much higher.
If you multiply this, the amount of labor
which was needed to make this wall
was simply mind-blowing.
It was an impossible technical feat.
[narrator] It's not hard to see why the biblical writers
believe that it took three days
to walk across Nineveh.
The Assyrian capital was a mega-city.
One of the largest in the ancient world.
It covered an area of more than 2.5 square miles.
So, why is Nineveh so big?
A clue lies in the east of the city,
where Nicolo's team is helping
to rebuild another of the city's massive gates.
Here, investigators uncover an inscription,
hidden from view for more than 2,500 years.
It reveals the name of the king who built it,
a mighty warrior called Sennacherib.
One of the most notorious rulers in the Old Testament.
[Nicolo] This is the inscription
by Sennacherib, and it says,
"Sennacherib, King of Assyria, King of the world,
erected the inner wall and the outer wall of Nineveh,
and built it as high as a mountain."
[narrator] In 705 BC,
Sennacherib inherited the Assyrian throne.
His father had been killed in battle,
bringing shame to the royal family.
So Sennacherib decided
to move the imperial capital to Nineveh
and start again.
Nicolo's investigations reveal
how Sennacherib remodeled Nineveh's existing settlement
on an unprecedented scale.
He doubled its size
and even diverted the Khawsar River
to run through it.
This is not encampments surrounded by walls,
empty, as so many people have surmised.
Our researchers have shown
that this was a real, thriving city.
Wherever we look, we find buildings.
And this is extraordinary.
[narrator] Archaelogists think that Nineveh
was home to more than 100,000 people.
Sennacherib's ambitions had no limits.
He decided to turn Nineveh
into one of the biggest cities on Earth.
Only Babylon was comparable in size and scale.
So, who was Nineveh's mighty king?
And did his city live up to his reputation in the Bible?
The Bible says that Nineveh was a great city,
but steeped in sin.
So God sent a prophet, Jonah,
to preach against the people of the city,
and save them from their evil ways.
At first, Jonah refused.
He tried to run away, and ended up at sea,
where he was swallowed by a whale.
But when the whale spat him out,
he returned to Nineveh, and the people repented.
It's a famous tale,
but the Bible never says exactly why
the city needed saving.
So, what was Nineveh like to live in?
Tradition says that Jonah was buried on this hill in Nineveh.
Today, a mosque dedicated to him stands here.
It's now in ruins,
destroyed by the same militants
who tore down the city's ancient gates.
Intriguingly, investigators are uncovering the remains
of a vast palace beneath it.
It's one of several
built by the Assyrian kings in the city.
Fadhel Mohamad Khodr
investigates the most famous of Nineveh's royal residences,
Sennacherib's southwest palace.
[Fadhel speaking Arabic]
[narrator] The southwest palace
was the jewel in Sennacherib's crown.
Raised high on 160 layers of brick,
it had 80 rooms, adorned with sculptures,
and nearly two miles of decorated wall panels.
Sennacherib wanted this to be the greatest palace on Earth.
So, was the biblical story of Jonah
a rejection of Nineveh's extravagance?
Western archaeologists excavated this palace
in the 19th century,
driven by stories of the Bible and Jonah.
Today, little remains above ground.
But flying overhead
reveals the sheer magnificence of this legendary building.
[Fadhel speaking Arabic]
[narrator] Fadhel thinks that Nineveh's palaces
were designed to make a powerful statement.
[Fadhel speaking Arabic]
[narrator] So, was Nineveh just a royal playground?
Nicolo Marchetti thinks that there was more
to Sennacherib's city than grand palaces.
He has uncovered the remains
of a mysterious tunnel beneath the city walls.
We opened an area here, and we were very surprised
to understand this was a water inlet, a canal.
The tunnel is 42 meters long.
But we are there eight meters below the surface.
[narrator] The canal was part of an immense network,
carrying water to Nineveh from the mountains.
[Nicolo] Nineveh was, at that time,
undergoing a drought.
A severe drought.
And this is why they worked so hard for bringing waters
from very distant fields.
This is an incredible feat by Sennacherib.
[narrator] Nicolo has also unearthed evidence
of where Sennacherib found the expertise
to pull off these pioneering projects.
[Nicolo] We found a library of literary texts.
And the contents are incredibly interesting.
There is no administrative aspects here.
This is a library belonging to a learned individual.
[narrator] Nicolo and his team found fragments
of around 50 texts.
But these are just the tip of the iceberg.
[Nicolo] At Nineveh there was another library,
which is the Library of Ashurbanipal,
which is an immense library,
featuring tens of thousands of tablets.
So this was a truly imperial capital,
and the intellectuals flocked here
from all around the empire.
[narrator] Nineveh was very different
to the decadent city of sin
portrayed in the story of Jonah.
So why did the biblical writers place his story here?
Did something happen later
to spark the city's evil reputation?
A clue could lie in a stone carving
from inside one of Nineveh's palaces.
It shows an Assyrian king and his queen
relaxing in a garden,
while behind them, the head of an enemy hangs from a tree.
Did this paradise city have a dark side?
New discoveries reveal
how Sennacherib transformed Ninneveh
into a city of astonishing sophistication.
But did everyone embrace
the ancient Assyrian way of life?
The Assyrians, unlike the writers of the Bible,
believed in many Gods.
So could this be why Nineveh was seen as evil?
Our cameras have been granted rare access
to the Mosul Museum,
where Khaireddine Nassar and a team of specialists
are trying to save the remains of Nineveh's ancient past.
Islamic State militants blew up this building
and smashed many of its greatest treasures.
[Khaireddine speaking Arabic]
[narrator] These feet belong to
the statue of a winged bull,
a popular Assyrian deity known as a Lamassu.
The creature's body represents speed and strength.
But each one has a human head,
a symbol of wisdom and intelligence.
These celestial beings were hugely popular deities.
Archaeologists find Lamassu
at all the major Assyrian cities.
The Assyrians saw them as guardians.
[Khaireddine speaking Arabic]
[narrator] Archaeologists have discovered an astonishing 43
of these colossal statues at Nineveh alone.
So, where did these fantastic beasts come from?
A clue could lie with another, far older city.
Sebastian Rey is digging the ancient site of Girsu
in southern Iraq.
A familiar creature has been uncovered here.
[Sebastian] This was found at the site of Girsu.
This is a small stone sculpture
of a mythical supernatural being
with a human head and the body of a bull.
It's probably the earliest known representation
of these supernatural beasts known as Lamassus.
[narrator] This sculpture is more than 1,000 years older
than the ones from Nineveh.
[Sebastian] This is, in a way,
a sort of prototype of the Assyrian Lamassus,
those great beasts.
[narrator] Sebastian thinks it reveals
how the Assyrians saw the cultures
that came before them.
[Sebastian] This confirms this long tradition
of myths, legends that were copied
time and time again
throughout the thousands years of the history of Mesopotamia.
[narrator] Mythical beasts were hugely popular
throughout the ancient world.
The Assyrians had the Lamassu.
The Egyptians had their own version, the Sphinx,
a fiercely protective lion with the head of a pharaoh.
Even the ancient Israelites, who believed in one god,
had cherubim, heavenly creatures
who act as guardians and bearers of God's throne.
The Assyrian religion was similar
to most other cultures at the time.
So why does the Bible single out
their capital, Nineveh, for special condemnation?
A clue lies in the reliefs
that once adorned the walls of Sennacherib's palace.
They depict his forces attacking the city of Lachish,
in the Kingdom of Judah.
Soldiers advance behind siege engines,
while defenders hurl missiles at the attackers.
But against Sennacherib's war machine,
resistance was futile.
He destroyed Lachish, flayed alive its leaders,
and led its citizens into captivity.
The story of Jonah was written
well after all these events happened.
Sennacherib's conquest of Israel
made his capital the enemy
in the eyes of the biblical writers.
But the story is also a morality tale.
Jonah warned that the city would be destroyed.
A prediction that came true.
In 612 BC, Nineveh's great rival, Babylon,
raised it to the ground.
The Assyrian empire was broken,
and never recovered.
But Babylon has an even worse reputation in the Bible.
Why did the Biblical writers not celebrate the city
that had freed them from Assyrian rule?
In the 7th century BC,
the Babylonians destroyed Nineveh.
Their capital, Babylon,
now became the greatest city in the world.
But for the writers of both the Hebrew
and the Christian Bible, it was a den of wickedness.
According to the Old Testament,
Babylon's infamy stretched back to the dawn of time.
Nimrod, who founded ancient Erech,
supposedly built this city, too.
His people set out to build the Tower of Babel,
a building so tall, its height offended God.
He punished the people of Babylon
by making them speak different languages,
so they could no longer work together,
and the tower was left unfinished.
It's a fabulous story.
So, was Babylon really the original sin city?
Today, Osama Hisham from the World Monuments Fund,
and archaeologist, Ammar al-Taee,
work to rebuild Babylon.
Despite the city's infamy,
investigators know surprisingly little
about its origins.
[Osama speaking English]
[narrator] Osama and Ammar are currently restoring
a temple dedicated to the goddess, Ninmakh.
Above ground, it's a modern reconstruction,
built during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Iraq's notorious dictator wanted to appropriate
Babylon's glorious past for his own ends.
But the reconstructions stand on ancient foundations.
[Ammar speaking English]
[narrator] Excavation trenches like this
reveal how Babylon's original buildings
were made from mud brick.
The team has had to figure out the Babylonian recipe
for mud brick to make their repairs more authentic.
[Ammar speaking]
[narrator] If the Tower of Babel did exist,
it would have been constructed from mud bricks like these.
Some think that the city's giant ziggurat
might have been the inspiration
for the biblical tower.
But there's a problem.
Today, it's a heap of mud brick.
And no one knows exactly how old it is.
The city's high water table makes it very difficult
for archaeologists to find Babylon's earliest buildings.
[Ammar speaking]
[narrator] So, archaeologists must hunt
for evidence elsewhere
to reconstruct the city's origins.
According to Genesis,
Babylon was one of the world's first cities.
But today, most archaeologists
believe it was a relative latecomer.
Assyriologist, Stephanie Dalley,
thinks Babylon first rose to power around 1800 BC,
under a king called Hammurabi.
Hammurabi was a great builder,
and may even have constructed the original ziggurat.
He transformed Babylon
from a small, regional city into a huge metropolis.
[Stephanie] Hammurabi was a great king.
He dug wonderful canals
to facilitate transport and so on.
And by building the canals, he made it possible
to irrigate a larger expanse of agriculture.
[narrator] This influential ruler
also produced one of the earliest
lists of laws ever discovered.
Known as the Code of Hammurabi,
its principal of reciprocal justice
could even have influenced
the Bible's "eye for an eye" rule.
Archaeologists have found copies of the Code
across the Middle East.
It's impossible to prove
exactly when Babylon was founded.
But its long and glorious past
could explain why the writers of the Bible
saw it as one of the world's first cities.
Stephanie thinks that Babylon's fame
also drew criticism,
which may explain the origins of the Tower of Babel story.
[Stephanie] It sounds as if they're mocking the fact
that people are babbling away
and can't understand each other.
And that, to me, tells how cosmopolitan Babylon was.
[narrator] Other myths from the time suggest that
the biblical authors may have intended their story
as a slight on a city so proud of its vast architecture.
[Stephanie] We've now found a text
which seems to be making fun of the people
who build towers out of mud bricks,
so they fall down all the time.
[laughs] And of course, the Tower of Babel,
the ziggurat in Babylon, did fall down,
irreparably in the end.
[narrator] So, why did the biblical authors
focus so much on Babylon's flaws,
if everyone else admired this great city?
The answer lies with its most notorious king,
Nebuchadnezzar II.
In 586 BC, Babylonian armies conquered Jerusalem,
and deported its population.
His campaign would earn Babylon
its terrible reputation.
Who was Nebuchadnezzar II?
And how much about his reign is true?
In 586 BC,
the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II,
conquered the city of Jerusalem.
The Bible says he ransacked the city's temple,
and exiled its people to Babylon.
2,500 years ago,
Babylon was an awe-inspiring sight.
The exiled Judeans would have entered the inner city
along a huge avenue called the Processional Way,
that led to its main entrance, the Ishtar Gate.
Babylonian engineers built this gate
from baked brick instead of mud brick,
and covered it in images of animals
to amaze those who came through.
For the exiled Judeans,
it was the entrance to a prison like no other.
What can this mighty structure tell us
about the man who brought them here?
Was Nebuchadnezzar the megalomaniac
of biblical fame?
Our cameras have been granted special access
to Osama Hisham and his team,
as they rebuild the Ishtar Gate.
[Osama speaking]
[narrator] Over the centuries,
this colossal monument has been plagued
by Babylon's destructive water problem.
[Osama speaking]
[narrator] To safeguard the gate,
the team must ensure that water does not become trapped
inside the brick walls.
[Osama speaking]
[narrator] The reconstruction work
gives Osama an insight
into the mind of the king who commissioned it.
[Osama speaking]
[narrator] But Nebuchadnezzar wanted a city
that was beautiful as well as big.
In the 1900s, German archaeologists
discovered thousands of broken glazed bricks
that used to cover the gate.
They shipped them to Berlin,
where specialists painstakingly reconstructed
Nebuchadnezzar's crowning achievement
in its original glory.
This is the awesome sight
that would have greeted the Hebrew exiles
as they began a new life,
thousands of miles from their home in Jerusalem.
Museum curator, Helen Gries,
protects this ancient mega-structure.
[speaking English]
[narrator] Today, Helen and her team
undertake crucial work on the Processional Way.
[Helen speaking]
[narrator] They begin by taking
high-resolution photographs of each individual brick.
By comparing them to images taken in previous years,
they can check for signs of damage
to the fragile glazes.
Helen focuses on one of the ornate lotus flowers
that line the walls.
[Helen speaking]
[narrator] Helen's forensic analysis of the bricks
also reveals how Nebuchadnezzar's artists
pioneered a new technique
to give the tiles their bright blue color.
[narrator] But Helen thinks
these ground-breaking monuments also reveal
how Nebuchadnezzar wanted to be seen.
Assyrian palaces are covered
with images of war and conquest.
But these Babylonian walls are alive with mythical beasts.
The lion represents Ishtar, the goddess of love and war.
The bull is the symbol of the weather god, Adad.
And the white dragon is the avatar of Marduk,
Chief God of Babylon.
There are more than 575 animals on these walls.
Nebuchadnezzar wanted to show himself
as a devoted follower of the gods.
But to the biblical exiles,
the King must have seemed anything but pious.
[Helen speaking]
[narrator] Nebuchadnezzar was far from the liberator
of the ancient world.
He used the loot
from conquered cities like Jerusalem
to make Babylon great again.
So, what was life like for the exiles
inside this monumental prison?
And how did Babylon really fall?
The bible describes Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar II
as the ultimate city of sin.
It tells us that he conquered the population of Judah
and exiled them to Babylon.
According to the Book of Daniel,
the exiles endured a succession
of terrible hardships in their new home.
Including when one king threw the prophet Daniel himself
into a lion's den.
[lion roars]
Ultimately, God brought divine retribution
to the Babylonians.
Nebuchadnezzar descended into madness.
And a new people, the Persians, conquered the city.
Many historians believe that the earlier parts of the Bible
were written in Babylon by exiled priests.
For them, exile was a traumatic experience,
which explains the Bible's
negative portrayal of the city.
Did all Judeans see Babylon that way?
Helen Gries finds a clue among the thousands
of cuneiform fragments found at Babylon.
This tablet is a rare glimpse
into what life in exile was like.
[narrator] Jehoiachin was among the thousands
of Judean exiles sent to Babylon.
Archaeologists discovered this reference to him
in Nebuchadnezzar's royal archive.
[Helen speaking]
[narrator] Nebuchadnezzar granted Jehoiachin
an allowance of sesame oil from the royal storehouses.
[Helen speaking]
[narrator] As a former king,
Jehoiachin enjoyed special treatment.
But lower-ranking Judeans also took to life in Babylon.
When the King of Persia, Cyrus the Great,
conquered the city and allowed the exiles
to return home to Jerusalem, many decided to stay.
[Helen speaking]
[narrator] Hundreds of years after Babylon fell,
the Book of Daniel emerged.
It was an apocalypse story,
warning that God would punish those who disobeyed him,
just as he had done
to the sinful King Nebuchadnezzar.
The fierce rivalry between Babylon and Nineveh
shaped the ancient world.
The writers of the Bible
saw the rise and fall of these cities
as cautionary tales.
A sign of what happened to those
who went against the will of God.
[Nicolo] The historical reality of the Assyrian East
was quickly forgotten.
Western civilization only kept memories through the Bible.
The interplay of ancient and modern myths
in Mesopotamia
is like a constant feature of the land.
[narrator] But now, archaeologists are uncovering
the true achievements of these remarkable civilizations,
rebuilding lost wonders,
and resurrecting rich and ancient cultures.
Their investigations will take many years,
as Iraq continues to recover
from decades of war and terrorism.
But the Babylonians and the Assyrians of Nineveh
left us an incredible legacy.
They preserved the stories and the culture
of the first city builders, the ancient Sumerians,
whose echoes can still be heard
in three of the world's great religions.
The truth behind the lost cities of the Bible
is the story of the dawn of civilization.