All language subtitles for Mysteries.Unearthed.with.Danny.Trejo.S02E07.Divine.Discoveries.1080p.HULU.WEB-DL.H264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Mysteries can be
buried anywhere,

under the earth,

beneath the sea,

or even right
under our own feet.

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find
can change history.

Tonight,

Divine Discoveries,

from a sacred fortress
in the heart of Rome.

The whole place is buttressed
like a defensive stronghold.

They have uncovered one

of the most important religious

institutions in
the entire world.

To a stone tablet
with a sacred message.

He does his best
to read the writing

and what he's got

astonishes him.

To the oldest
temple in the world.

It's so ancient

that it predates the
construction of Stonehenge

and the Pyramids at Giza.

And the fact that it
survived for over 11,000 years

only to be discovered by chance

makes that even
more extraordinary.

Join us now, because
nothing stays hidden forever.

Sometimes just
doing your job

results in astonishing finds,

especially when that
job is construction

in an area rich in
biblical history.

It's 1913,

and construction of the
Palestine-Egypt railway

is moving full steam
ahead along the coast

of what is now the
modern state of Israel.

But as these railroad workers

are clearing out
space to lay track,

they strike a large stone
that seems out of place.

In this sandy earth, they
find a flat piece of marble

about two feet tall
and two feet wide.

As a few workers start to
excavate it from the ground,

they notice that there is
very faint writing on it.

It's been etched into the marble

and it's in a language
that they can't understand.

intrigued by the
find, one worker decides

to take the large marble
slab home with him.

When he gets it to his house,

he puts it in his courtyard and
uses it as a stepping stone.

The inscription
is placed face up,

and it stays that
way for 30 years.

Then, in 1943, he
puts the stone up for sale,

and it attracts the attention
of archaeologist Jacob Kaplan.

Kaplan heads to the house,

and when he takes a
look at the inscription,

he immediately
recognizes the writing.

It's Paleo-Hebrew, which
is a style of writing

that was used from 1000
BC up until about 135 AD.

So right off the bat,

Kaplan knows that this
thing is really, really old.

And although he can
identify the script,

he can't actually understand it.

Nevertheless he goes
ahead and he buys the slab

and he takes it home

and enlists some
of his colleagues

to help him to decipher it.

As they start to translate,

the first line grabs
their attention.

It reads, "I will call you to
remember for goodness forever,

God spoke all these words."

Then, further down the stone,
they identify other words.

"You shall not murder."

"You shall not commit adultery."

"You shall not steal."

Kaplan has found a
fully intact stone

of the Ten Commandments,

that dates back to the
era of the Old Testament.

In the Bible,

the Ten Commandments were
famously given to Moses by God

at the top of Mount Sinai.

But those tablets
are smashed by Moses

when he sees the Israelites
worshiping the golden calf.

God later dictated the
commandments back to Moses

who inscribed them onto
a second set of tablets

in the 13th Century BC.

And then according to the Bible,

those tablets are stored
in the Ark of the Covenant,

but then later on, the Ark
and those tablets go missing.

For a moment,
it seems the mystery

of the missing tablets
may finally be solved.

but as researchers study
the stone more closely,

they realize something
doesn't add up.

Only nine of the 10
commandments from the Bible

are present on this stone.

The third commandment
is missing.

The replacement commandment
is an order to build a temple

on Mount Gerizim, which is a
sacred site for Samaritans.

Further research discovers
that a Samaritan synagogue

was built in the place where
this stone tablet was found.

That temple
was constructed

between 300 and 800 AD.

So the stone, while old,

was likely created hundreds
of years after Moses's time.

Dr. Kaplan holds onto this
stone for the next 50 years,

until finally his wife sells
it after his death in 1995.

Over the following decades,

it changes hands a few
times without much fanfare.

Then in December of 2024, the
stone goes up for auction.

The stone's age, its
distinct third commandment,

and the unusual story
of its chance discovery,

ignite interest in the sale.

Bidding starts
out high,

and then the price just
keeps going up and up and up,

'til finally, when
the final gavel falls,

the selling price is
$5 million dollars.

The marble tablet
goes to an anonymous buyer

who pledges to donate it
to an Israeli institution.

In the end, this humble relic

will be preserved and
admired for generations.

Next, a different kind
of sacred discovery,

one frozen in time
high up in the Andes.

On September 18th, 1995,

a mountain climber named
Johan Reinhard and his guide

are climbing Ampato
mountain in Southern Peru.

They are hoping to get a photo
of an active volcano nearby,

but as they get
close to the volcano,

the sky fills with
smoke and ash,

begins to rain down on them.

The ash fall is melting
the snow under their feet,

exposing rock that
has been covered

by ice caps for centuries.

And as they near the peak,

there's something bright
and red on the ground

catching Johan's attention.

As he gets closer,
he sees that the red

is in fact red feathers
sticking out from some rocks.

And when he looks, he
sees that the feathers

seem to be part of a hat.

Johan moves away some of the
stones, and he is astonished.

Looking up at him from the rocks

is the face of a young girl,

no more than 12 or 13 years old.

The body looks
very well preserved,

she's wrapped in beautiful
colorful textiles,

and she's surrounded by
gold and silver figurines

and pottery vessels.

It's a
breathtaking discovery,

but one that's also
incredibly fragile.

Johan's worried that the
heat from the active volcano

will soon destroy this
naturally-preserved mummy.

He carefully picks
up the girl's body,

and begins with his guide

the dangerous descent
down the mountain.

It is a perilous journey, a
treacherous 45-degree descent.

It takes two full days.

And then when he and the
guide are down at the bottom,

it takes another 13 hours to
walk to the nearest village.

Safely recovered,

the mummy becomes
known as "Juanita"

and is an international
sensation,

hailed as one of the greatest
discoveries of the century.

But when researchers begin
to study her more closely,

they uncover
something surprising.

Juanita is sent to Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore

where she's scanned, and
researchers determine

that she was likely killed
between the ages of 11 and 15.

Cause of death?

Blunt force trauma to the head.

But the evidence suggests
that this was no accident,

that Juanita was
intentionally killed.

Her death
may have been brutal,

but the treasures
buried with her

point to something far
more sacred than murder.

Several of the items
Johan finds with her remains

are fashioned of
precious metals.

It's not likely these

would have been
left accidentally behind

by a murderer.

It's much more likely

that they were
intentionally left behind

as a sacrificial offering.

The figures and ceramics
feature Incan designs,

which suggest that Juanita had
been sacrificed to the gods.

Child sacrifice is
of course abhorrent,

but at the time it
was a sacred duty,

and this places her death to
sometime in the Incan empire,

between 1400 and 1450.

Juanita's sacrifice
wasn't just ceremonial,

it may have been a plea to
calm a furious natural force.

Historians believe

that the nearby Misti
and Sabancaya volcanoes

were really at the
point of erupting,

and that Juanita may
have been sacrificed

in order to placate the gods

and maybe make that
eruption less catastrophic.

There is something almost
poetic if you think about it,

that Juanita may have been
sacrificed to stop the eruption,

only to be discovered
as the ash melted away

and revealed her grave.

Let's say you're a
regular guy

with a passion for scuba diving.

You love looking at coral
reefs and tropical fish.

Then, one day, you accidentally
spot something surprising

under the waves.

It's 1998 in Guatemala.

A local businessman
named Roberto Samayoa

is out enjoying one of
his favorite pastimes,

scuba diving in Lake Atitlan.

This is a picturesque
lake flanked by volcanoes,

and mountain peaks
and charming villages.

Around 50 feet below the
surface, in very murky waters,

Samayoa sees something
out of place.

He sees a shape start to emerge.

Getting closer, he discovers
it's a large stone structure.

As he continues to explore,

he finds a series of
staircases, temples, plazas.

This is not just one structure.

In essence, it looks like
some kind of underwater city.

Samayoa
reports his findings

to local archaeologists,
but no one believes him.

Frustrated, he leaves the
site untouched until 2007.

Samayoa decides to
take matters into his own hands.

He dives upon his find
once more, but this time,

he comes equipped with an
underwater digital camera.

He snaps a few photos,

and now, everyone is
beginning to believe him.

Researchers spend the
next five years using sonar

to map out this
underwater metropolis.

What they
uncover is more than ruins,

it's the remains of a
2,500-year-old Mayan city.

Once thought to be just a
legend, they name it Samabaj,

a blend of Samayoa's name
and the Mayan word for stone.

As researchers
explore further,

it's the religious elements

that unlock the
mystery of Samabaj.

Within the ruins,

they find 16 different religious
structures, and two saunas,

which the Maya would use
to cleanse themselves

before religious ceremonies.

And then there's a
large central square

with a stone altar and a
sacred pillar at one end.

When the Maya were
thriving in this area,

around 350 BC to 250 AD,

this city sat on an island
in the middle of this lake.

For
centuries, Samabaj stood

as a sacred sanctuary.

so how did this entire ancient
city wind up underwater?

One of the volcanoes
along the shore

of Lake Atitlan erupted.

Lava flowed down toward the lake

and plugged up a
drainage channel

that carried overflow
down the mountain.

It's kind of like when
you plug up your bathtub

while the water's running,

the water just continues
to rise and rise and rise.

By the time the
water stopped rising,

Samabaj was deep under the lake,

and stayed out of
sight for 1,700 years,

until Samayoa found it.

Ironically, the same
water that drowned Samabaj

helped preserve it.

Because of the
island's location

deep down in murky waters,

the site has not fallen
victim to things like looting,

which has caused desecration

of other historical sites all
throughout Central America.

So thanks to that
volcanic eruption,

combined with
Samayoa's discovery,

Samabaj is probably the
most well-preserved site

of Mayan culture to this day.

From an ancient city
lost below the waves,

to an even older site
buried under the earth,

our next story takes us
to a hilltop in Turkey.

Back in 1986, in
Southeastern Turkey,

a farmer is plowing his property

along the foothills of
the Taurus Mountains.

He reaches this area which
is called Belly Hill,

a mound of land that
stands about 50 feet higher

than the surrounding plateaus.

This area is filled
with large stones

that all poke up
through the earth,

threatening to
break his equipment.

The farmer's been trying to
remove some of these stones,

most of them are too large
to get out of the ground.

But on this day in particular,

one of these stones
catches his attention.

He takes a
closer look

and he clears away some
of the surrounding dirt.

It's a limestone statue
of a human figure,

with finely carved
eyes, nose and mouth.

Below that there's
not much of a body,

except for a large phallus.

The statue looks really old,

and so the farmer decides
to take this to a museum

about 12 miles away.

The director of the museum

does not seem very
interested in this find,

but when the farmer
threatens to throw it away,

they do reach a compromise

and decide to place the
statue in the museum garden.

The statue
sits there until 1992,

when a visiting archaeologist
named Klaus Schmidt sees it.

Dr. Schmidt has been
doing excavation work nearby

and recognizes this
as a neolithic figure,

at least several
thousand years old.

He wants to know more,

so he travels to the
farm where it was found.

When he sees the
large mound of land

that rises up above the plateau,

he can tell that it's man-made,

and these large stones that
keep getting in the farmer's way

are actually the tops
of limestone structures.

Schmidt turns
his attention to the mound

and begins to dig.

Not very long after
these excavations begin,

archaeologists find massive
limestone megaliths

that are so close to the surface

that some of them have
actually been scraped

by the farmer's equipment.

Further down, they find
16-foot-tall stone pillars,

each weighing between
seven and 10 tons.

Some of them are carved with
detailed reliefs of animals

like lions, foxes,
snakes and vultures.

There are also enormous
megaliths arranged

in a circular pattern,
over 90 feet in diameter.

Altogether the site leads
archaeologists to believe

that they've uncovered
some kind of giant temple.

The site is
called Gobekli Tepe,

and carbon dating
puts its construction

between 9500 and 9000 BC,

making it the oldest temple
ever discovered in the world.

It's so ancient that
it predates writing

and the invention of the wheel.

It was constructed 6,000
years before Stonehenge

or the Pyramids at Giza.

Its age
is astonishing,

but what's even more
surprising is how it was built.

Schmidt estimates it would
have taken over 500 people

to build Gobekli.

But humans were believed

to be hunter-gatherers
at this time,

and this site suggests

that there was much
more intelligence,

cooperation and planning
that went into this

than archaeologists could
have possibly thought.

Gobekli Tepe was
a truly epic feat

of design and
construction for its time.

And the fact that it
survived for over 11,000 years

only to be discovered
by chance, by a farmer,

makes that history even
more extraordinary.

When we think
of papal palaces,

we usually think of the Vatican.

But the popes actually
had an earlier home,

one lost to time
until very recently.

It's the summer of 2024.

And the city of Rome
in Italy is gearing up

for Jubilee 2025.

It's a massive
Catholic celebration,

and it's expected to draw
roughly 30 million pilgrims

to the city.

To prepare for the
influx of tourists,

the city undergoes
a lot of upgrades.

One major project is renovating

and repaving the public square

in front of Basilica di
San Giovanni in Laterano,

the oldest public
Catholic church in Rome,

which was founded in 324.

The plan is to
add new landscaping,

lighting, even a fountain.

But not long after
shovels hit the ground,

workers strike something that
appears to be an ancient wall,

then another, then another.

It seems they've stumbled
on some kind of structure.

They call in a team
of archaeologists,

largely led by Daniela Porro.

She's the special superintendent
of archeology in Rome.

She analyzes these
walls and sees

that they're made of tuff,

basically an amalgam of
stone from volcanic ash,

buttressed by wood.

She's able to realize
through her analysis

that these walls date
back to the ninth century,

which means they have found
something incredibly special.

These are
the fortification walls

that protected the original
palace of the pope.

Before the Pope and
the Catholic church

were based in
nearby Vatican City,

the head of the church resided

in an elaborate papal
palace in the heart of Rome.

It was built around 312 AD,

during the reign of the
emperor Constantine the Great.

The palace would undergo
several expansions and upgrades

over the next 500 years as
the church grew in power.

As the Church expanded,
the papal palace became a target

for Arab Anti-Catholic invaders

and even Roman
aristocratic infighting

right at its doorstep.

In fact, the violence and
the conflict got so bad

that in 1309, the papacy
left the basilica,

and actually relocated
the seat of the pope

to Avignon, France.

Abandoned and empty,

the palace falls into neglect,

and ultimately is
decimated by fire.

In 1377, the papacy finally
made its way back to Italy,

this time to Vatican City.

A few hundred years later,

Pope Sixtus V decided to tear
down most of what remained

of the original palace complex.

When
construction crews

rediscover the palace
ruins 500 years later,

archaeologists turn
their attention

to preserving the site.

Antiquity experts
and archaeologists

feel it may take years to fully

grasp the enormity
of what is in this structure.

What they do know is
that they have uncovered

an incredibly
well-preserved time capsule

of one of the most important
religious institutions

and religious titles
in the entire world.

Next, a casual
walk in the woods

leads to finding another
piece of papal history,

one that dates back
hundreds of years.

It's January 2024.

Jacek Ukowski is walking
along railroad tracks

in northwest Poland
near the German border.

This area was used as
a Nazi escape route

at the end of World War II,

so people sometimes find
remnants of the past here,

helmets, firearms or
other military artifacts.

As he's walking, his eye
catches something half-buried

under the base of a tree.

He realizes it's a
wedge-shaped object,

it's made of metal, but
upon closer inspection,

he sees this is not
a Nazi war relic,

in fact he doesn't even think
it's from the modern era.

It's nothing like
he's ever seen before.

Ukowski brings his
discovery to a local museum,

hoping their experts can
shed some light on this find.

There, archaeologist
Grzegorz Kurka identifies

that the object is made of lead.

He examines it, and on
one side, he sees letters

and some Roman numerals
which captures his attention.

Kurka has seen an
artifact like this before,

it's a lead papal bull seal,

or bulla used to
authenticate papal decrees.

Kurka is now all in,
and he wants to find out

which pope this
actually belonged to.

Every pope's bulla

has on one side an image
of Saints Peter and Paul.

But the other side is always
unique, it has the Pope's name.

Unfortunately,
this seal is cracked,

but he's able to
decipher certain things

that give him clues as to
which pope this might be from.

He's able to see the
letters E and U-S.

And based on these clues,
he's able to deduce

that this was the
papal bull seal

of one of four possible popes,

Benedict XI, Clement V,
Benedict XII, or Clement VI,

all of which will date the
seal between 1303 and 1352.

Unfortunately, the
document the seal

was attached to

decayed long ago, so we
may never know exactly

which Pope this
bull belonged to.

In any case, the seal survived
in that spot for centuries,

but the mystery will likely
survive for many, many more.

Imagine finding an unusual
stone in a pile of rubble,

and learning it's
covered in writing

dating back thousands of years.

What happens next is
an adventure story

straight out of the movies.

In 1868, a French
missionary is traveling

in what is now
modern day Jordan,

delivering aid and spreading
Christianity in the region.

His work takes him to
a small abandoned area

near the village of Dibon,
where something catches his eye.

In a pile of rubble, in ruins,

there's one stone that
looks out of place.

It's about four feet tall,

it's black, and it's covered
in strange characters.

He can't read
the writing on it,

but he does his best to
copy out some of the script

with a quick sketch.

Later, he returns to Jerusalem
and shows it to a friend,

who thinks that the writing
looks like Phoenician,

an ancient script that
was the foundation

of the Greek and
Hebrew alphabets.

Soon, news
of the Phoenician stone

catches the ear of
Charles Clermont-Ganneau,

a French translator and
amateur archaeologist

based in Jerusalem.

Charles is intrigued,

and so he dispatches a friend
called Ya'qub Karavaca,

to go make what's
called a squeeze.

A squeeze is a
paper impression

when the paper is wet,

pressed in the inscription
and then pulled away,

sort of like when
you rub a tombstone

to get the inscription
off the front of it.

But before
the impression can set,

rising tensions between nearby
tribes take a dangerous turn.

Ya'qub and the stone
are surrounded by

two Bedouin tribes.

And it seems that the
locals have understood

that there is something
significant about this monument,

and they're now
fighting over it.

In the melee, the paper
impression is torn up,

and then suddenly, Ya'qub
gets stabbed in the leg.

Ya'qub narrowly
escapes on horseback,

and brings the torn inscription
fragments to Charles.

Slowly, one by one,

Charles begins to piece these
pieces of paper together.

And what he's got in the end

is something that
astonishes him.

It's 34 lines of text

written in first person by
somebody called King Mesha.

According
to the Bible,

back in the ninth century BC,

Mesha rebelled against
the kingdom of Israel

and ruled Moab,

an ancient territory,
located in modern-day Jordan.

The writing is
mostly a recounting

of Mesha's military victories

and other history of the region.

But what really
gets Charles excited

is that the text contains
historical references to Israel,

the House of David,
biblical events.

It even gives the
Hebrew name for God.

These are some of the
earliest references

to events in the Bible
in the historical record.

Basically, this rock
could be evidence

that the events of the Bible
are based in real history.

They call
it the Moabite Stone.

But as word spreads,

the locals fear the stone will
be plundered by Westerners,

so they decide to destroy it.

So they pour
water on the stone,

and then they light
a fire underneath it.

When the water gets
hot, it turns to steam,

and the steam expands,

and effectively blows
the stone to pieces.

The Moabite
Stone fragments

are then hidden among the
members of the local tribe,

and Charles spends three
years trying to find them.

Initially he's able
to find 38 pieces,

and then eventually another 19

are either recovered or donated.

And then utilizing the
squeeze as reference,

he begins to painstakingly
reassemble the shattered stone.

In 1873, it makes its
debut at the Louvre.

It's an absolute sensation.

People flock to
get a personal look

at this real-world piece
of biblical history.

And the story of how
it was discovered,

destroyed and pieced
back together again,

only adds to the
mystique of this relic.

Over 2,000 miles away,

another hidden box holds proof

of a different kind
of worshiped figure.

In 1827, an English soldier

named James Lewis is posted
with the army in Agra, India.

He fakes his own death
and deserts the army,

a crime, by the way, which
is punishable by death.

He then changes his
name to Charles Masson,

and for the next few
years, goes adventuring

and seeks fame and fortune

in places like India
and the Middle East.

Charles, as he's known,
is quite the character.

During his travels he
assumes several identities.

He poses as a monk,

as a Frenchman, as
a haji, as a healer,

all the while developing a
keen eye for ancient artifacts.

In 1833, the British
East India Company hires him

to explore and
document ancient sites

in what's now Afghanistan.

Charles arrives in
the Gandhara Valley,

and he sees there a series
of ruined, domed buildings.

And he goes in to explore them,

he is hoping to find
some ancient coins

that might have some value.

But instead he finds a round
soapstone box with a lid.

Charles opens the container,
and discovers pearls,

and coral and sapphire
beads, all burnt.

And at the center
of the container,

he finds an intricate
gold cylinder,

adorned with
carvings and rubies.

The gold cylinder
is a reliquary, or casket,

which would traditionally
hold sacred offerings

and physical remains
of a holy person.

This reliquary doesn't
contain any human remains.

Instead it's carved with a
series of eight human figures,

and Charles recognizes
one of them as the Buddha.

We typically associate
Afghanistan with Islam.

But early trade routes actually
brought Buddhism to the area

around the fourth century BC,

about 1,000 years before
the arrival of Islam.

While Charles thinks
he's uncovered a treasure

nearly 2,000 years old,
it takes another 50 years

before the true significance
of his discovery

is fully understood.

In the late 19th century,

Western scholars start to
take more of an interest

in Buddhism and its
teachings in Gandhara.

They soon realized that
the image of Buddha

that Charles saw on the casket

was the earliest depiction
of Buddha ever found.

Today,
statues and images

of the human figure of
the Buddha are common.

But before the first century AD,

the Buddha was typically
depicted with symbolic images

like footprints, the lotus
flower, or an empty throne.

On this reliquary, the
Buddha is clothed in a robe

and holds up his hand
in a mudra position.

The amazing
find becomes known

as the Bimaran Casket,

and it goes on display at
the British Museum in 1900.

Yet the story behind it,

and the man who
brought it to light,

is almost as extraordinary
as the relic itself.

While there's no
doubt that Charles

was a colorful character
and a skillful liar,

it's undeniable that
he's also responsible

for one of the most important
Buddhist discoveries

of all time.

The old city of Jerusalem

is known for its rich
religious history.

One small stone box found there

contains a stunning
link to the past,

one dating back to
the time of Jesus.

It's early 1976 in the
old city of Jerusalem.

A 25-year-old engineer
named Oded Golan

is looking through items
in an antiquities market,

when his eye is drawn
to a limestone box.

The dealer tells him

that it comes from a nearby
neighborhood called Silwan,

but he doesn't know
anything else about it,

other than the fact that it
is an ossuary, or a bone box.

Ossuaries were very common
in the first century AD.

People would be buried
for about a year,

and then their bodies
would be exhumed

and their bones would be
placed in a limestone box.

It was a way of dealing
with space issues,

if you didn't have
enough room for burials.

They were often
elaborately decorated,

sometimes the name of the person

or a phrase was
inscribed on the side.

The box that
Golan discovers

is relatively
unremarkable,

but on the front of it
there is some script

in a language that
he doesn't recognize.

He likes collecting antiques,

the dealer isn't
asking very much,

so he buys the
box for about $200

and puts it on a shelf
in his parent's house.

The box sits
untouched for 26 years.

Then in 2001, Golan meets
an ancient language expert

named Andre Lemaire
at a dinner party

and asks for help deciphering
the inscription on the box.

Lemaire is amazed.

It's written in Aramaic,
and it says on it,

"James, son of Joseph,
brother of Jesus."

Names like Jesus and Joseph
were common at the time,

as was James.

On the other hand, ossuaries
don't normally list the names

of siblings of the deceased,

so it may be that this Jesus

had to have been
pretty important

to be name checked on
his brother's bone box.

That name-drop
raises eyebrows,

along with questions
about Jesus's family ties.

In the Bible,

we do know there was a
figure named James the Just,

who was said to
be Jesus's brother

and he was a leader
after Jesus's death,

of the first generation
of Jesus's followers.

We also know James
the Just was martyred,

he was stoned to death very
violently around the year 62 AD.

If authentic, this
would make the James ossuary

the earliest written reference

and very first physical
piece of evidence

connected to Jesus ever
found in Jerusalem.

Golan allows Lemaire
to borrow the box

to check its authenticity.

Lemaire first examines
the style of the script,

which he dates to
around 60 or 70 AD.

This just happens to
correlate historically

with when James actually died.

Then he takes bits
of limestone flecks

from the surface of the box,

and he has them sent away to
the geological survey of Israel

in order to get tested.

They determine that the script

could not have been
carved with modern tools,

and they also say that the
aged patina of the stone

could not have been forged.

Lemaire publishes his findings

and then begins a press tour

to publicize this
amazing discovery.

Even with
all the evidence,

there's no definitive proof

of whose remains
the box once held,

leading the Israel
Antiquities Authority

and others to question
its authenticity.

Today, Golan loans it
to museums around the world,

where visitors can
get an up-close look

at what might be an
artifact of Jesus's life.

They say history can
be stranger than fiction,

which is the case

with what one young fisherman
pulls from the sea in 2013.

August 16th, 2013.

A young Palestinian
fisherman named Judah Ghurab

takes his small boat
out into the waters

off the coast of Gaza.

He's looking in the
shallow waters for fish.

As he's looking
down from his boat,

he sees a dark figure
maybe 15 feet down.

It looks like a man, so
he's startled at first,

but then curiosity
gets the better of him

and he jumps out of his
boat and dives down,

and what he finds is there's
a large statue down there,

half buried in the sand.

It's dark metal with
hints of green and gold

and Judah wonders if he's
found something valuable.

But it's too heavy for
him to lift by himself.

Judah heads back to land,

gathers up some friends and
family and they head back out

and they try to bring
the statue to the surface

by tying around
it a clothesline.

For four arduous hours,

they take turns diving
down to the bottom,

yanking on the clothesline,

dragging the statue
across the seafloor

until they finally
reach the shore.

They're able to heave the
statue onto a donkey cart,

and take it to Judah's
house for closer inspection.

The statue is a
six-foot-tall naked man,

with dark curly hair.

Judah thinks it's made of gold
and that he's hit pay dirt.

And then about a month later,

the statue makes a surprise
appearance on eBay.

It includes a few
blurry photos of the statue

laying on a bed in a child's
bedroom, with smurf sheets.

Even by eBay standards,
this is a strange listing.

Bidding opens at
a mere $500,000.

The post and asking
price gets the attention

of Gaza archaeologist
Fadel Al-Utol,

who identifies the statue

as an incredibly
well-preserved bronze

of the Greco-Roman god, Apollo.

One of the 12 Olympians,
Apollo is a son of Zeus,

and he's the god of archery,
music, truth and healing.

He's also considered to be one
of the most beautiful gods,

and this statue
does him justice.

Al-Utol is amazed

by how beautifully well
preserved this statue is.

He estimates it weighs
more than half a ton.

Given its purported
size, condition and rarity,

this Apollo of Gaza

could fetch anywhere between
$20 and $45 million dollars.

Unfortunately,
before Al-Utol

can examine the
statue in person,

the Gaza authorities swoop in.

Immediately, police arrive
to the statue's location

and haul it away.

Soon after in 2023,
war breaks out in the region,

and news about the Apollo
statue all but disappears.

Whatever the fate of
this particular statue,

there is still the hope of
other very similar discoveries,

because we know that this statue

was actually made from a cast.

And so maybe there
were other copies

that were made at the same time.

Maybe they're still out there,

whether under the
water or on land,

just waiting to be discovered.

A long lost papal palace,
a statue of a Greek god,

fragments of a priceless text,

these are just some of
the divine discoveries

that give us new
insight into the past.

I'm Danny Trejo, thanks for
watching Mysteries Unearthed.