Welcome to Hegra, Saudi Arabia!
Well, the temperature may be soaring, but I assure you
that what you see behind me is no mirage.
It is one of hundreds of massive structures
carved out of the very rock itself,
the fingerprints of an enigmatic civilization
that once dominated the richest trade routes
of the ancient world,
the Nabateans.
Two thousand years ago, the Nabatean kingdom
ruled the desert from here, in Arabia,
all the way to the Sinai,
a strategic position that made them rich
beyond imagination.
Despite their immense wealth and power,
the reign of the Nabateans was surprisingly brief
before they vanished into history.
Today, shockingly little is known about them.
Most of their tombs were found empty.
Their legendary riches never recovered.
So, where did they come from?
How did they manage to tame these unforgiving deserts?
And how did they build these jaw-dropping monuments?
The answers may lie at their most famous city,
hundreds of miles away in the deserts of Jordan.
Carved by hand into the walls of a remote and hidden canyon,
Petra is a place that defies explanation.
At its heart is the mysterious marvel known as the Treasury.
The most famous facade on earth
is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World,
and played home to the Holy Grail
in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Local folklore says it hides the wealth
of the city's founders.
In reality, though,
scholars remain puzzled by its true purpose.
Now, archeologist, Pearce Paul Creasman
has been granted unprecedented access
to excavate at the Treasury.
A once in a lifetime chance
to dig beneath this historic icon,
and a dangerous expedition
to uncover an ancient inscription
may finally shine a light
on the origins of the Nabateans.
Meanwhile, scientists are using groundbreaking imaging technology,
to reconstruct the charred remains of scrolls
that could decipher the lost fate
of this civilization.
So choose wisely, and join me
on an adventure worthy of Dr. Jones himself,
as we unlock the truth and treasures
of the Nabateans.
The past is all around us.
Oh, this is crazy.
A world of mystery...
This is a plane.
-[man] Yeah. -[laughs]
...danger...
We are about to be underwater.
Whoa!
...and adventure.
It's just straight down!
Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
I travel to the far corners of the earth
to uncover where legends end...
[screams, laughs]
...and history begins.
Okay, let's punch in.
I'm Josh Gates,
and this is Expedition Unknown.
Well, I have flown from the deserts of Saudi Arabia
all the way to the nation of Jordan.
This was once the heartland of the Nabatean kingdom.
But their city of Petra is still a ways off.
To get there, it's a three-hour drive to the south.
Okay, maybe four hours.
[sighs]
Nabateans probably had a lot less traffic.
[horns honking]
[Josh] Amman is something of a mirage
because as soon as you clear the capital,
Jordan reveals her true nature...
vast, desolate,
and absolutely stunning.
Look at this place.
Whoo!
Like another world.
After a long drive in 100-degree heat,
I've consumed every drop of water in the car...
and finally approached the canyons surrounding Petra.
There are, of course, no cars allowed
in the ancient city of Petra,
which means I'm gonna have to transfer to a more...
traditional form of transportation.
Even on the back of a spitting, ornery camel,
the entrance into Petra is awe-inspiring.
This is the Siq,
a nearly mile-long slot canyon
whose walls rise almost 300 feet
above the desert floor.
It offers shade, but more importantly, protection,
concealing the Nabateans' grand capital city,
from the outside world.
How well did it work?
Well, western scholars had no idea what was down here,
until only 200 years ago.
Swiss explorer, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt,
assuming the alias, Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah,
earned the trust of a local guide
and gained access to the ruins,
making him the first outsider
to lay eyes on this.
Look at that.
Wow.
This is Al Khazna,
better known as the Treasury.
One look, and it takes your breath away.
A stunning rose-colored facade,
carved out of the solid rock itself.
It has become the emblem of the Nabatean kingdom.
Here to welcome me to the site is my old friend,
archeologist, Pearce Paul Creasman.
-Pearce Paul. -Josh.
I always knew someday you'd come walking back through my door.
Oh, he even quotes Raiders!
Last time I saw you, you were trying to drown me.
Not successfully, mind you.
[Josh] A year ago, he was excavating the tomb of a pharaoh
in a flooded pyramid in Sudan.
And I was dumb enough to follow him.
Oh, my word!
But finding the remains of a pharaoh in his tomb
was just a side quest
to his work as the head of the American Center of Research in Jordan,
where he and his team are investigating
the mysteries of Petra.
The Holy Grail is in there, right?
-I mean, but it has to stay behind the Great Seal. -[Josh] Of course.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade made this place incredibly famous.
I mean, if you know Petra, you know this building.
It's one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, though.
Yes, Petra is a lot more than just this building.
Yeah, if you really wanna understand Petra,
-we gotta go for a walk and check it out. -All right. Lead on.
Time for an all-access tour of the Petra that many never see.
[Pearce] I know it looks like this part of the canyon is empty...
-[Josh] Right. -[Pearce] ...but if you look closely,
every surface has been modified.
[Josh] All of this has been shaped?
[Pearce] A lot of it is below where we're standing today, though.
[Josh] Part of this city is buried?
-[Pearce] A lot of this city is buried. -[Josh] Wow.
The valley we're walking in has become choked with sand,
burying many of the earliest parts of the city underground.
Later generations just built more structures on top.
How many of these are there?
There's more than a thousand cataloged.
It's insane.
The Nabateans transformed rock into a living city
in one of the driest places on earth.
Construction on Petra began in the 4th century BC.
Over the next 300 years,
the city grew from desert outpost
to engineering marvel,
home to as many as 30,000 people.
Yet by some accounts, only 15 percent of Petra has been excavated,
and the people who built all of this
are virtually unknown.
So if I'm being honest, the Nabateans are a mystery to me.
-[Pearce] Join the club. -[Josh] They are a mystery, right?
There's a lot we don't know about them.
There's much more we don't know than we do.
[Josh] Where do they come from? Let's start with that.
-I'd love to be able to tell you. -[chuckles softly]
Where do we think they come from?
We think they came as a confederation of...
of what we would think of as tribes today
from the northern Arabian deserts.
Right, so when the Nabateans come on the scene, who are the big players?
So, around the Nabateans in their early history,
it's the Greeks, Alexander the Great.
And then you've got the Romans coming after that.
You've got the Ptolemies in Egypt,
and you've got a couple of Mesopotamian civilizations.
And right in the middle of all of this,
-out in these deserts are the Nabateans. -[Pearce] Yes.
The Nabateans are desert people.
They have mastered what it is to cross them,
-to live in them, to be around them. -Yeah.
People just can't come into their home
and do what they do.
-Right. -So the Nabateans, they're the highway
of the ancient world.
And when you wanna move things like the frankincense, the myrrh,
who are you gonna call?
-The Nabateans. -Obviously.
[Josh] The Silk Road and Incense Road,
which moved the most valuable goods in the ancient world,
both ran right through here.
In fact, every major trade route from the east
to Greece, Rome and Egypt crossed this desert.
So, these guys start out like long-haul truckers.
-Yeah. -They're like the Teamsters of the ancient world.
Yeah, they start off independent contractors...
-Right. -...and then they get organized.
-They are the Teamsters. -[chuckles]
[chuckling] Yeah.
And we see, in all of this construction,
they must have ended up really wealthy.
The numbers that are thrown around in the ancient texts
are like Monopoly money.
[Josh] And money, even in ancient times, means power.
Power that we see reflected here at Petra,
where the Nabateans somehow carved all of this,
borrowing architectural and artistic elements
from all their trading partners,
Greeks, Romans and Egyptians,
to impress upon anyone who visits,
"We are important."
And impress, they did.
Huh...
And they have a theater.
Uh, they do indeed.
[Josh] Wow!
Exhibit A...
an 8,500-seat Roman-style amphitheater,
carved into the bedrock itself.
You know, when you think about desert-dwelling people,
you think about nomads,
you think about a simple way of life,
just kind of humble way of life.
This communicates something very different.
-[Pearce] It's not that. -[Josh chuckling] Right.
This says art, this says culture.
There's writing and performing, singing.
This is sophistication.
Yeah, the mathematics to build all this, in the first place...
-Right... -...to understand the geography...
Sadly, I don't remember any great Nabatean plays.
Not a lot of Nabatean writing survives.
[Josh] And this is the problem.
With the exception of a handful of inscriptions,
the Nabateans didn't exactly leave us their biography.
And it isn't just writing that we're missing.
Many of the small caves cut into the canyon are in fact tombs,
but every single one of them is empty.
No bodies, no offerings.
No relics.
Nearly all of the structures here are mysterious,
like the so called "Great Temple,"
which may have actually been a palace.
Okay, so when does this get built?
So, this is associated
with the reign of a king named Aretas IV.
-Right. He's, like, one of the the big king, right? -He's the big king.
-He's the guy. -[Pearce] He's the guy.
He's the great builder here.
The apex of Nabatean civilization
is considered during this guy's reign.
King Aretas IV ruled from 9 BC to 40 AD,
a fairly busy time in this corner of the world.
In fact, he's mentioned twice in the New Testament.
But Nabatean kings may have been viewed
more as administrators than royalty.
According to folklore, they walked freely among their people.
This modesty may explain why no confirmed
royal Nabatean tombs have ever been found.
So Aretas is associated with the most famous constructions here.
Yes, and he's also associated with the most famous structure
-here at Petra, the Treasury. -Where we started.
But it's a bit of a mystery, and that's actually what we're working on right now.
-So, let's go up and I'll show you. -Back to the beginning.
Okay, here we go.
[Pearce] After all the stuff we've seen
and all the stuff we've already talked about...
-[Josh] Mmm-hmm. -[Pearce] ...in a lot of ways,
this is the biggest mystery of Petra.
[Josh] Which is crazy because it's the most famous thing here.
Like, how can this be the biggest mystery?
-It's the postcard. -[Pearce] It is,
but there's just so much we don't know about it.
[Josh] Start with this, why is it called the Treasury?
[Pearce] So, this is called the Treasury
because of, basically, urban legend.
The story is that this was a pharaoh's treasure chamber.
But this is a myth, a legend.
-This is a legend. -Right.
Okay, so what was it for?
You look around, and even just look directly at it.
-And it gives you a lot of hints. -[Josh] Okay.
[Pearce] Castor and Pollux.
[Josh] The two figures here and here.
-Yes. -This is the Gemini twins.
These are the half Roman twins.
[Pearce] And they accompany the dead.
-And then you see, there's a lot of urns here. -[Josh] Yes.
[Pearce] Urn is the Roman symbol for the dead.
So maybe this is a grand tomb.
The problem is, we've never found any physical evidence
inside of the Treasury...
to justify that.
There's no name and there's no text on here
to tell us what's happening.
[Josh] Isn't that incredible? All the work
to carve this out of solid rock...
-[Pearce] Yeah. -[Josh] ...no inscriptions left.
[Pearce] Nothing left to us today.
[Josh] That's right. Like nearly all the other carved structures at Petra,
no bodies were found inside.
They were likely looted in antiquity.
Archeologists don't even know when it was built.
They guess it was constructed by and for King Aretas IV
around 40 AD
because he had the means to do it.
But they can't prove it.
Okay, 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.
Got it?
One does not simply dig beneath the treasury.
If we're going to put shovel to ground here,
we need to be absolutely certain there's something to find.
So Pearce has called in another old friend.
-I think you know this fella. -Dickie Bates.
-[Richard] Josh, how you doing? -How're you, brother?
-[Richard] Good, mate. -Good to see you.
All right. Yeah, you too.
[Josh] Richard Dickie Bates is a geophysicist
with the University of St Andrews.
He and I have worked together for a long time.
Some might say "too long."
We wanted to bring in the best...
-instead we got Bates. -Unfortunately-- Ah!
-[all chuckling] -[chuckling] We both went after you.
-I'm sorry. -[indistinct]
Bloody hell. What did I do?
[chuckles] I'm just kidding.
I'm only joking because you know that you're so damn good at this.
Okay, so what's the plan?
-Geophysics, I assume. -Yeah, GPR or Ground-Penetrating Radar
picks out between, in this case, rock layers,
and then empty space, void beneath it.
-Mmm-hmm. -And we're gonna see what it shows.
-And if it shows something? -Well, then we'll get our hands dirty.
-Okay. Shall we scan? -We scan.
[Josh] Dickie sets up his equipment.
And Pearce Paul points us toward our first target.
We're getting exclusive access
to scan in a sacred space in Petra,
that is normally off limits to visitors.
-[Pearce] Let's go straight in. -[Josh] Into the Treasury.
-Wow. -[Richard] This is huge!
[Josh] Oh, my word.
[Josh] Into the Treasury.
-Wow. -[Richard] This is huge!
[Josh] In the ruins of Petra,
one of the New Seven Wonders of the World,
we have exclusive access to scan
with Ground-Penetrating Radar
inside the iconic building
known as the Treasury.
Look at the size of this room.
-Oh, my word. -[Richard] The scale.
[Josh] It's incredible.
Unlike Indiana Jones,
we don't have to spell "Jehovah" as we walk in.
Instead, the inside is comprised
of a soaring, but empty chamber.
This is one of the most mysterious rooms in the world
because you see all these carvings, these little alcoves,
and you just wonder what did this used to look like.
We've got these other weird clues here. Were these for doors?
[Pearce] Yeah, so this is its first set of hinges.
-And all the way up, you can see the joints on the top. -[Richard] Magnificent.
[Josh] Can you imagine? But nothing was ever found in here?
[Pearce] If it was found in here, it was so long ago that memory has lost it.
Yeah. There are a series of booby traps
and a crusader knight in here, right?
[Pearce] Absolutely. But that's in the back.
[Josh] Oh, it's in the back. All right, come on, let's scan it.
Let's see if anything's down here.
We scan the entire room,
running the GPR over every square inch,
hoping the radar will reveal a void beneath,
a target that might explain the purpose of the Treasury.
Okay, so what do we got?
[Richard] So, you know, here's the ground surface,
and then rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, rock.
At least 18, 20 feet, minimum.
I mean, it looks completely solid.
[Richard] So right here in the Treasury,
it looks like there's absolutely nothing immediately underneath it.
[Josh] The interior of the Treasury is magnificent,
but a bust, in terms of GPR hits.
We expand our search out into the courtyard.
We haven't found any reason to dig yet,
but there already appears to be a hole in the ground.
All right, so what's going on out here?
About 20 years ago, they came out and excavated,
this part in front of the Treasury.
They found what?
They found two big chambers, almost completely empty.
[Josh] Oh, you can see one right there.
But no royal tomb? No writing, no treasure?
Nothing under here that would really help us address the questions
of the who, what and when of this fantastic monument.
Okay. And what about on the other side of the Treasury?
Oh, that's the trick.
So, this is why we have Bates.
-Uh-huh. -[Pearce] And so I'd like
Dickie to come and give us a better idea
-about what's going on over here. -Let's do it.
Bates scans the existing cavity
to get a baseline reading.
Then we pull the GPR scanner across the rocky courtyard,
looking for evidence of a similar void for us to dig.
Something like...
-[Richard] Hey, guys, come and look at this. -Oh... No!
-Something? -Yeah. Now, what do you make of that?
There is something there!
[Richard] That is the signature that we've seen before.
[Josh] That looks exactly like the other side.
-Where we know there's a chamber. -Yes.
[Richard] That's a void, or I'll eat my hat.
[Josh] You're that confident?
-Absolutely. -Dude...
unbelievable!
So you're saying that almost directly in front of this building,
there's some sort of chamber we've never seen before?
That's what this says.
So now we've got to dig it.
Can we do that? I mean, can we put a shovel in the ground
in front of one of the most famous buildings in the world?
Look, we've got permission.
But if you don't wanna do it--
-No, I want to. I want to. -[Pearce chuckles]
[Josh] Let's see what's down there.
More than a million tourists visit Petra each year.
And as the first wave arrives for the day,
we rope off our dig site.
After all, we can't have a TikToker
falling into an excavation pit.
Once the site is secure,
Pearce calls in his right-hand man here at Petra,
archeologist, Matthew Vincent.
-Josh, nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you, man.
And Matthew calls in the dig team.
Yo, listen up!
[Josh] Here we go. Hey, guys.
The top of the GPR anomaly is 12 feet beneath us.
So for the first time in decades,
at the doorstep of a world wonder,
we are breaking ground at Petra.
Fingers crossed.
There are no shortcuts to discovery.
The dig begins as we claw at the hard earth the old fashioned way.
Digging in front of the Treasury,
it's totally, totally normal.
It's allowed. We have a permit,
I'm told.
The process...
break up the dirt,
transfer it to baskets,
dump into wheelbarrows,
and transport away from the Treasury.
Then repeat...
over and over...
and over and over...
in 100-degree heat.
The sand, filling every wheelbarrow and basket,
also needs to be carefully sifted
for potentially valuable artifacts.
So all of this soil has to go through the screen.
[Pearce] Yeah, they gotta go in, check it out, see what's in it,
because we can't always see everything
-when we're taking it out. -[Josh] Right.
So we take the big pieces out, the big rocks out.
[Josh] I'll tell you what is tough about this,
is that because of the redness of the rocks here,
it all kind of looks like ceramics at first glance.
It does, but there's a trick for that.
So you take a piece and...
Why... Archeologists are always licking things? Why?
I... just... it's convenient.
But what is that doing?
So if you lick the side of it,
you can see whether or not it's rock or ceramic.
-[spits] -Definitely rock.
-Or whether a camel peed on it. -[chuckles]
[sighing] God!
So, rock or ceramic?
[Josh] That is...
-rock. -Good call.
[Josh] See?
I didn't even have to lick it.
-[chuckles] -Rock or ceramic?
-[Josh] That is ceramic! -[Pearce] That is ceramic.
[Josh] Look at that. Piece of rim off of something?
Yeah, you know how you go to the grocery store today,
get a tin can, and it's got waves inside of it?
-[Josh] Yeah. -[Pearce] This idea is a couple thousand years old.
It allows you to make it stronger with less volume of material.
-That's why Ruffles potato chips are like that. -Probably.
That's why Ruffles have ridges. Who knew?
The pottery will be bagged,
while we find another bucket of sand to run through the sifter.
And considering the Nabateans were famous for their wealth,
it's important to look for things that shine.
Uh, hold on. Hold on.
[chuckles softly]
So, look at that.
Oh, my word!
-That's a coin. -Yeah.
Oh, my word!
I'm digging in the ancient city of Petra,
where a mysterious anomaly
deep beneath the iconic Treasury building,
may finally help us learn its true purpose.
But on the way down,
we've managed to discover a piece of Nabatean treasure.
It's a well-loved coin. It's got some mileage on it.
[Josh] And it's got markings.
Walk me through this.
-Help me see it. -[Pearce] So, we've got... Nike's standing here,
and then the wings draping down.
And these are the feathers of the wings.
[Josh] This is a Nabatean coin featuring a Greek theme.
Nike was often depicted in flight,
and was the goddess of victory,
someone the Nabateans would be thrilled to associate themselves with.
And we are no different today.
People hear the name "Nike," they think the shoe company.
And they don't realize that...
-Yeah. -[Josh] ...that's why it's called "Nike."
-Yeah. -That's why that swoosh logo is there.
-It's a representation of what is on this coin... -[Pearce] Mmm-hmm.
[Josh] ...the Nike wing.
-That is so cool. -[Pearce] Yeah.
And that's a really distinctive, uh, design
that only shows up in two types of the Nabatean coinage.
-The really, really old stuff... -[Josh] Okay.
-...before we even know who the names of the kings are. -Right.
And, uh, then Aretas III,
like, around 75 BC.
Here we have an actual chronological fingerprint.
[Pearce] Like a distinctive marker.
Again, giving us this relational chronology,
but also, we're right under the Treasury here.
-That's amazing. -It's incredible.
[Josh] The Treasury's true age is a mystery.
One theory is that it was built around 40 AD as a tomb
for the Nabateans' most accomplished king, Aretas IV.
The fact that we've discovered an older coin
bearing the image of his predecessor, Aretas III,
below the Treasury is a promising sign.
We get back to work,
going slow and steady in the desert sun.
But it will take days for Pearce Paul's team
to reach the depth of our anomaly.
In the meantime, Pearce Paul is taking me
to unravel another mystery of Petra,
the secrets of how the Nabateans
became powerful enough to build all this.
The answer isn't in Petra.
So early the next morning, we venture beyond.
Look at this place.
Is there a road around here, Pearce Paul?
[Pearce] Uh, this is one of those
choose-your-own-adventure situations.
Those never end well.
This part of Jordan is known as Wadi Rum.
And when Hollywood needs a desert, this is where they go.
Lawrence of Arabia was filmed here...
so was Dune, Prometheus,
Rogue One, The Martian.
Seeing a pattern?
If your desert can double for Mars,
you know you're in a serious environment.
The average rainfall here is two-and-a-half inches.
That's in an entire year.
But at least the temperature isn't too warm
in the early morning hours.
96 degrees.
[Pearce] I mean, just look.
Look at how terrible this would be. [chuckles]
And yet somehow,
the Nabateans are able,
without vehicles like this,
without ornithopters from Dune,
the Nabateans are able to conquer this place.
-Yes, they mastered this place. -[Josh] How?
Look, I'm gonna show you. I gonna want you to pull over
right up over the... by that mesa.
[Josh] Is there a Starbucks?
Sadly, no.
Damn.
-In here? -[Pearce] Yeah. Let's pull off here.
[Josh] Okay.
Here we go.
[Pearce] I wanna get up here and take a look at something.
[Josh] What is back here?
[Pearce] We've got to go up.
[Josh] We're going up? Okay.
[Pearce] I mean, it's no free solo, but it's not easy.
Petroglyphs!
Unbelievable. Look at these!
In the middle of nowhere, all of this incredible art.
Petroglyphs are ancient pictures carved into stone.
And out here, in the middle of the desert,
the builders of Petra chiseled their own.
So, okay, what am I looking at here?
[Pearce] Give me your first impression.
What's the story you think is being told here?
[Josh] Okay, so we have a bunch of camels here, and they're facing this way.
Yeah. What do you think is in that direction?
-Petra. -Yeah.
-Petra is that way. -[Pearce] Yeah.
Amazing. And then it looks like...
mounted guys with spears. Maybe a hunting scene?
It might look like that, but you have to understand it
to really get the full value of the information out of it.
These symbols tell you a lot, if you know how to read them.
-So the Nabateans are encoding these symbols. -Yes.
These spears that we're looking at
that make this look like a hunting scene
have been interpreted as navigational aids towards water.
Wow. So this is more than just a piece of art.
This is a navigational beacon.
-[Pearce] Yeah. -This is a direction.
This is ancient Google Maps.
So this is how the Nabateans are able to survive out here.
They've actually left themselves waypoints everywhere.
[Pearce] Yeah, symbols like this and other markers
are scattered all over the deserts here.
If you know how to read it, you'll be okay in the desert.
-Right. -[Pearce] And everybody else had no chance.
[Josh] Wow, that's incredible.
Now, I noticed, though, that we are not going
in the direction of the camels.
We're going deeper into the desert?
Yeah, we're gonna do the exact opposite thing that this tells us to do.
Right. Why don't we... Why don't we follow the map?
-[Pearce] Remember, "X" never marks the spot. -That's right.
I heard that somewhere.
[Josh] The glyphs are a glimpse
at how the Nabateans succeeded as nomads.
But to find out how they became powerful enough
to build their capital city of Petra,
Pearce Paul wants to find out where they first put down roots.
To get there, we point the car north.
A couple of hours through the dunes,
until we run out of what passes for a road around here.
Well, it's beautiful.
[Pearce] It is that.
[Josh] Okay, so where are we?
-This is As Sela. -[Josh] Sela.
So how does this place help us understand
the Nabatean rise to power?
This is the closest thing we get
to the Nabatean origin story.
-So let's go take a look. -[Josh] Okay. Let's see it.
Whoo!
Look at this place.
-[Pearce] Impressive, huh? -[Josh] It's incredible.
I mean, we could be in the Grand Canyon right now.
Okay, so why are we here?
The reason we're here is that this was an ancient fortress
-of the Edomites. -The Edomites.
How well do you remember your Old Testament?
Oh, flawless. Like the... like the inside of a Denny's menu.
Um, I kind of remember this.
There's, uh, Jacob and the 12 tribes.
This is where we get Israel, right?
-And then he has a brother-- -Esau.
-[Pearce] Yeah.
Esau establishes the kingdom of the Edomites.
Yes, and they're one of several kingdoms in this area
at that time, 1250 BC.
Okay, so we're, like, a thousand years
-before the Nabateans. -[Pearce] Yeah.
All right, so what do the Edomites have to do with the Nabateans?
Look up on this cliff face and tell me what you see.
Uh, okay. On the cliff.
I'm looking for caves.
I'm looking for tombs. I don't see either.
[Pearce] Well, start up at the cut in the rock in the top...
-[Josh] Uh-huh. -...and then come straight down
until you find some right angles.
[Josh] Oh, that square!
-Is that carved in the rock? -[Pearce] That is.
[Josh] What is that?
That's an ancient inscription.
-That's an inscription? -[Pearce] Yeah.
[Josh] Can we read it?
[Pearce] And there's the rub.
Out of about 100 lines, we can only read about six or seven.
And what we can read says what?
It tells us what happened to the Edomites,
and how it sets up the Nabatean world.
[Josh] So, how do we read more of it?
We need to scan it.
There's never been a digital scan of this done.
All right. Can it be scanned from here?
-No. -No.
No!
-No. -We only need to be, like, this close.
No, it's a sheer cliff face, man.
-I called some friends. -No.
They're waiting for us.
Come on, let's get the packs in the car and let's do it.
No!
I'm not gonna answer your calls anymore.
It's a long, long way up.
Not exactly a leisurely hike
under the best of circumstances.
And in the summer heat, it's downright punishing.
Okay, this sucks.
Fortunately, as we reach the top,
it's clear that we are not on our own.
Pearce Paul has called in an advance team,
including master rappeller, Marwan Ma'ayta,
to help us examine the inscription on the cliff face.
How's it going?
I'm tired. That's how it's going.
-Yeah, it's quite a ways up. -It's quite a ways up.
-[Pearce] Okay. -[Josh] How far a drop is this?
From the top to the bottom, it's two football fields.
Will we be hands-free there to be able to scan?
Yeah. Yeah. We will be lowering you guys.
Okay. Should we get kitted up?
-Yeah. -Yeah. Let's do it.
-Let's do it. Come on. -Yeah.
[Josh] We gear up to head down.
Safety first.
I hope.
The rappel platform has already been set up on the cliff face,
so we clip in and make our way to the edge.
700 feet above the ground.
Oh, my word.
Josh, you ready?
Ready as I'm gonna be.
Archeologist Pearce Paul Creasman and I
are attempting to decipher an immense but faint inscription
carved into this cliff,
which may be the key to understanding the origins of the mysterious Nabateans.
But scanning it may be one of the scariest things I've ever done.
All right, we've got the scanner clipped to you.
Okay, yup. I have the scanner here. Yup.
So you're gonna have to deploy it when we get down there.
And why am I going first again?
Because you have the scanner. That's the ticket.
-Because I have the scanner. Right. -[Pearce] Yeah, yeah.
But why did I have to have--
It doesn't matter. Okay, here we go.
To scan the inscription up close, we'll need to dangle
about 30 feet below the platform.
The ground, that thing I'm hoping to kiss in a few hours,
that's another 650 feet below.
This is officially terrifying.
Pearce Paul, see you in a minute.
[Josh exhales deeply]
[inhales deeply]
Calm your nerves.
Calm your nerves. Okay.
I see the inscription.
It's below me.
Oh, God, this is scary.
Keep going.
A little bit more. I'm almost at the top.
Copy that.
[Josh] Keep going.
I'm at the top of the inscription.
A little lower.
Little more.
Okay, stop.
That's good.
[man on walkie-talkie] Copy that. Hang in there.
Pearce is on his way down.
-[Pearce] Coming down, buddy. -[Josh] Yup.
You got it, man. Nice and slow.
[Pearce] I'm going as slow as I can.
[Josh] Okay, you're on it.
-It's the very top. -[Josh] Yeah.
[Josh] A little bit more.
[Pearce] Hold.
[Josh] Finally, my cameraman, Ryan, makes the trip down.
My drastically underpaid cameraman.
Okay, we're good.
All right. Welcome.
[Pearce] Okay, Josh, now that we're here, what do you see?
Uh, a sheer drop to my death.
-Oh, on here? -[Pearce] Yeah, yeah.
-Sorry, sorry. -[Pearce] That's a few minutes from now.
Uh, I see a figure.
There's somebody here. And a helmet, a crown, something like that.
Oh, that's a fancy hat, technical term.
-[Josh] Technical term? -Yeah.
And he's holding a staff.
-[Josh] Oh, yes. This right here? -[Pearce] Yeah.
[Josh] So, we have a staff going down here.
So, who is this?
Josh, no question, you're looking at a king.
-[Josh] It's a king? -[Pearce] No question.
[Josh chuckles] Incredible.
You're one of the only people in the world
to have ever come face to face with this carving.
I mean, look at this.
Who's foolish enough to come up here?
[Josh] The people who carved it, right?
So, king of what?
No doubt this is a Mesopotamian king.
-A Mesopotamian king? -Yeah.
What the heck is a Mesopotamian king doing here?
[Josh] It does have that distinctive shape to the crown.
-[Pearce] Yeah. -[Josh] How do we know it's Mesopotamian?
[Pearce] Well, because of the writing, too.
[Josh] Oh, there's the writing.
You can see it going down.
You can see them there by your left knee.
There's some really good quality preservation.
[Josh] This is...
-cuneiform? -[Pearce] Cuneiform.
[Josh] These little wedge-shaped cuts.
This is one of the oldest scripts in the world.
It's extremely distinctive.
[Josh] Cuneiform is an ancient writing system
used in this part of the world by civilizations
dating back to the Sumerians of Mesopotamia
in the fourth millennia BC.
It helps mark the beginning of recorded history itself.
This is incredible.
-A whole lot of very faded cuneiform. -[Pearce] Yeah.
It's been blasted for centuries by the elements.
I mean, just turn around and take a look.
I'm not turning around. I'm not turning around.
[shrieks] I turned around.
Why did you make me turn around?
Oh, my God, it's so far down.
It's so far down. Okay.
Shall we get to work?
-I'm ready if you are. -Yeah, let's get to work.
The Artec Leo 3D scanner will capture the inscription with incredible detail,
detecting variances in the rock
invisible to the naked eye.
I've used this tech before, but never on anything this large.
[Josh grunts] Whoo.
Okay, I've got it.
Swinging back.
Pearce Paul and I pass the scanner back and forth
to cover the entire inscription.
We're almost done, guys.
Forty photos a second will be stitched together
to digitally view the inscription
with unprecedented accuracy.
So now we got to go down, take a look at this data and see what we got.
That means we can leave?
You sure you just don't want to hang around for a while?
[Josh] Oh, my God.
I'm gonna cut his rope. Let's go.
Okay, we're headed down.
-[Pearce] Awesome. -[Josh] Awesome job.
[Pearce] Epic.
[Josh] The journey to the inscription was a one-way trip.
Instead of going back up, we need to rappel down to solid ground.
That's a long way down.
-[Pearce] Watch the scanner on the overhang. -[Josh] Yeah.
[Pearce] Otherwise we do it again tomorrow.
[Josh] Whoo.
I'm good.
I'm down!
Back on terra firma,
we grab some water and cry quietly to ourselves
before Pearce Paul brings up the scan on our computer.
Time to see what the mysterious inscription reveals.
All right, moment of truth. You ready?
Please let this have worked.
Oh!
Oh, my God!
-Look at that! -Amazing.
Amazing.
-The detail is incredible. -It's stunning.
Instantly, just on the first look,
I can tell so much more about this.
There are so many details here...
-Yeah. -...that I couldn't see when we were up there.
[Pearce] When this thing was originally discovered,
they were able to read a couple of lines of text.
The data we got, I can see dozens of lines.
[Josh] This is so awesome.
And out of all of these lines of text,
-how many of them have been translated? -Not very many.
We're talking 2, 3, 4, 5%.
-Single digit, small number. -Okay.
So maybe with this scan, with this detail, more to follow?
I think not maybe.
I think certainly there's more to come.
So my cuneiform is a little rusty.
Who is this guy? What does the text tell us?
So this first sentence gives us the home run.
It says, "I am Nabonidus, King of Babylon."
[Josh] In the sixth century BC,
the Babylonian King, Nabonidus,
had spent a decade in this region
conquering small tribes and settlements,
when he set his sights on the people living here in Sela.
And we know one of the things
that he is reported to have done
is to bring the Edomite empire to an end.
And this monumental inscription is announcing that.
[Pearce] This is rubbing it in.
-[Josh] Yeah. -This is insult to injury.
This is going to their place and saying,
"You're gonna remember this."
-Yeah. "I won." -Yeah.
So, him defeating the Edomites
happens around when do you think?
Like, 550 BC.
So this really is a smoking gun saying,
"At this moment in time, in this place,
the Edomites are destroyed."
Unfortunately for them, the Babylonians didn't get to enjoy Sela for too long.
Soon after taking this place from the Edomites,
Babylon itself was conquered,
leaving Sela without a landlord.
But not for long.
A void appears.
There's a dark spot on the map.
Right. Nobody's here now.
-The Nabateans are here now. -[Pearce] Uh-huh.
They start filling it in.
This power vacuum that's here, they fill it.
-This is their origin story. -[Josh] Right.
All these nomadic tribes that are out in the desert.
Suddenly, nobody is in charge here.
And there's an opportunity for them to coalesce,
and to come to this place.
And this is one of those things
where we get really lucky.
Later in history, a Roman historian tells us
that in 312 BC the Nabateans,
the first time we ever hear this word,
are so present, so powerful, so dynamic at Sela
that they are able to fight off
one of Alexander the Great's generals.
-[Josh] Whoa. -Not once, but twice.
Wow.
Perhaps forged by generations enduring in the desert,
the Nabateans prove formidable,
a trait that will help propel them to great success.
So here we are, centuries before Petra is really a thing...
-Yeah. -...and the Nabateans are on the scene.
[Pearce] Yes.
And so what do they do with that here at Sela?
Well, I can take you up and show you.
-They left stuff behind? -Yeah. Let's go take a look.
[Josh] We strap our packs back on
and hike up to another part of the mesa.
It's just as hot.
But at least this time, I'm not worried about how I'm getting down.
Oh, wow.
-This looks like something you'd see at Petra. -[Pearce] Yeah.
This is where we really start to see Nabateans' fingerprints.
-This is what? -[Pearce] The city gate.
[Josh] These are for doors?
Yup. This allows them to block things off, control access.
[Josh] The Nabateans are learning how to take
the natural shape of these canyons
and use it to their advantage.
-So entrance to the city and beyond. -[Pearce] Yup.
[Josh] All right. Shall we see what's in there?
We walk through the gates
and see what the Nabateans built long before Petra.
Oh, my lord!
Look at this place.
[Pearce] So, all around, you can see signs of life.
[Josh] I'm in the mountaintop ruins known as Sela,
investigating the origins of the Nabatean kingdom.
Here, at their first settlement,
we're seeing the genesis of their incredible ability
to shape the stone around them.
You can see all these signs of construction. Oh, look at this.
-[Pearce] Yeah. -[Josh] I mean, look at that up there.
That looks exactly like Petra.
-That squared off, carved area. -[Pearce] I know.
If these were red rocks, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
[Josh] Totally. That's very Nabatean looking.
Using only manual tools like hammers and chisels,
the Nabateans fashioned rough-looking caves,
and then clearly honed their skills into more refined designs.
-Oh, this is a house. -[Pearce] This is a house.
-Here, you've got the front door area. -[Josh] Uh-huh.
-[Pearce] You put your little oil lamp in here. -[Josh] Right.
-You've got-- -That's your front porch light.
-Yeah. -[Josh] Okay.
So you've got that in the front of your house.
And then we've got this pretty spacious dwelling here, right?
Yeah. I mean, it's good space.
And it's well protected from several sides.
-But if you look at the holes above the ceiling. -Yeah. Are they post holes?
[Pearce] These are post holes.
[Josh] To turn this cave into a home,
the Nabateans would mount beams in the post holes,
then drape fabric over them, like a tarp, for shade and shelter.
Pretty sophisticated.
-Indoor, outdoor like a covered porch. -Absolutely.
[Josh] The mountain is covered with homes like this,
where the Nabateans could cease their wandering in the desert
and live in safety.
They took the knowledge they gained here
and applied it to their capital at Petra.
It's an amazing evolutionary leap,
as was their ability to navigate the deserts.
But then we spot the thing that made the Nabateans a true powerhouse.
[whistles] Whoa.
Look at the hole.
[Josh] Is that a water cistern?
It is. It's a cistern.
I mean, that is deep.
[rock thuds]
-[Josh] That must be 20 feet deep. -At least.
-So this is a massive water cistern. -Yes.
This would have held thousands and thousands of gallons.
When you think about this part of the world, you don't think of water,
but there must have been a ton of it here.
Well, this is a big part of the secret of the Nabateans rise,
is their ability to manage water, to direct it, to dam it.
Without that technology, they don't make it.
This is life.
Without this, you cannot survive here, much less thrive.
And this will make you think about Petra in a whole new way.
Absolutely. It's all about water.
We make the long drive back to Petra,
and I see that Pearce is right.
Within these well-protected walls,
the innovation and building prowess
the Nabateans mastered in the desert
is on full display.
Now that we're back from Sela,
you have to look at Petra through a different lens.
Everything is about water management.
Oh, all of this is like a channel,
like an aqueduct system.
[Pearce] And every one of these little valleys would have had dams in it.
This is a big part of why Petra is Petra.
-Right. -If your whole situation in this part of the world
-is about managing water... -Right.
...this is the place.
-Look at this valley. -Right.
All the water during rains floods down through these canyons.
And if you can learn to harness it,
you can then take advantage of it.
Got it.
Today, we see Petra as surrounded by desert,
but it was once a resplendent oasis.
Thanks to the Nabateans mastery of water,
precisely engineered irrigation systems
would have carried water to every corner of this city.
The path we walk would have been surrounded by greenery
and terraces of exotic fruit trees.
There was even, honest to God, ancient piping.
[Pearce] This is actual plumbing.
-Right. -Ceramic pipes like cones set one into another.
And the place is plumbed.
And at multiple levels in some places.
But these ones that would have been open,
if you were entering Petra coming down through the Siq,
you would have been listening to the echoes and seeing water,
-flowing water. -Yeah.
It sets a real distinctive tone.
It's like having a fountain in the foyer of your house.
It's a statement.
-I mean, you're showing off. -Right.
They're doing something in the desert
that you shouldn't be able to do.
They have running water.
And we have resources.
-[Josh] Yeah. -Look at us.
-Yeah. -[Pearce] Look what we can do.
[Josh] But its greatest mystery,
the truth behind the wondrous treasury,
is still waiting to be solved.
As we continue down the corridor of the Siq,
we hear a reason to pick up the pace.
[man] Josh, Pearce, get over here.
They found something.
-Let's see what we got. -[Josh] Yeah. What is it?
-We got a lot more people here. -[Pearce] Yeah.
[Pearce] Oh, this looks very official.
[Josh] Turns out we've got company.
The team is 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.
Thank you for having us back.
Where have you been?
We've been in the desert, we've been in the desert.
-We're back. Okay. -[Fares] Really? Oh.
Look at how much progress you guys have made here.
Look, you're all the way down there.
You guys have moved a lot of earth.
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 in this way.
Look at that. That's a doorway.
And it goes all the way 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. Come down. -Yeah. I knew I like this guy.
-Yeah. -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.