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A massive army, swallowed by a sea of
sand.

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A lost city, believed to be buried by
the hand of God.

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And a sunken man-made structure, older
than civilization itself.

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It was not that long ago that the ruins
of the world's oldest known

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civilizations lay hidden beneath vast
deserts.

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Over thousands of years, the sands of
time blanketed an ancient land

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stretching from Egypt to Mesopotamia,
entombing the world's first cities,

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empires, and complex communities.

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What's been discovered so far is
extraordinary.

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It only begs the question, what secrets
will be uncovered as we dig deeper into

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our buried distant past?

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Well, that is what we'll try and find
out.

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Today, more than 8 billion people live
in nearly 200 countries around the

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globe.

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But what are the origins of our
organized and complex modern world?

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According to archaeologists, the answers
lie buried in the mysterious deserts of

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North Africa and the Near East.

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where thousands of years ago, ancient
societies laid the foundations of human

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civilization.

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Africa, Arabia, and ancient Mesopotamia
gave us some of the earliest cultures

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that we have.

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And so we'll see monumental
architecture, or we'll see evidence of

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an organized religion, or diversified
trade or jobs among people.

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Sometimes we'll see a single language.

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These are what we begin to call the
markers of a civilization, as opposed to

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just a bunch of people living together.

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And all subsequent civilizations
basically rose from these earliest

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cultures in the region.

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There's a rich history of buried cities
under the sands.

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So you have all these great temples,
forts, buildings, empires that are there

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in the deserts.

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It's a place of mystery.

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We've uncovered many of these
civilizations, but there's so many other

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places that are hidden, so many other
sites that are yet to be uncovered.

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It's hard to imagine the devastation and
loss faced by communities who are no

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match to powerful desert winds.

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Some storms are said to be so strong a
massive army could be swallowed.

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by a sea of sand.

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Pelusium, Egypt.

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This fortified border city once
protected ancient Egypt from invaders.

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According to the famed Greek historian
Herodotus, in 525 BC, it was the site of

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the Battle of Pelusium.

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When the Persian Empire, led by King
Cambyses II, became the first, foreign

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power to conquer ancient Egypt.

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The Persian Empire has taken over most
of Egypt at this point in history, but

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there are some holdouts. So one of the
holdouts is that this oasis city of

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Siwas that refused to bend the knee to
the Persian king, this is in the very

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western desert of Egypt, where there is
an oracle to the Egyptian god Amun.

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The Oracle of Amun.

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was a famous temple, renowned as a
center for prophecy, where priests would

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interpret the divine will of Amon, the
most powerful deity in ancient Egypt.

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And for a conquering king, a blessing
from this all-powerful god would justify

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his rule over Egypt.

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And so the great Persian ruler, Cambyses
II, He wants the oracle to confirm

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his divine kingship. The oracle refuses
to do that. So we get this story from

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the Greek historian Herodotus. Somewhere
around 525 BC, Cambyses II

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sends his army out to say, oh, you're
not going to affirm me as divine king.

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I'm going to destroy this oracle. I'm
going to send out 50,000 of my best

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soldiers to go through, cross the desert
to the Oracle of Siwa and lay waste to

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it.

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According to Herodotus, 50,000 Persian
soldiers set out from the city of

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Thebes, the former capital of Upper
Egypt, to defy the gods and destroy

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the Oracle of Amman.

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But first...

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They would brave at 10 to 14 day march
across a vast wasteland known as

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the Great Sand Sea.

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The Great Sand Sea is a huge area.

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It's about 400 kilometers long and
probably as many kilometers wide.

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And it really looks like a sea. You can
hardly see any gaps between the dunes.

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It's just row after row after row.

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It's just very difficult to travel in.

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because the dunes are extremely steep
and quite high, but the real difficulty

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is sufficient supplies of water, and
there are no wells.

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But you might also stumble into
quicksand.

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You could be caught in a sandstorm. You
could be bitten by a scorpion or poison

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a snake. So the whole environment is
really against you.

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This is called the Great Sand Sea, and
sandstorms are real, and they are

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something to be reckoned with.

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At Siwa, they're obviously notably
nervous, because they know this army is

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coming.

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50,000 men, and according to Herodotus,
after several days marching in the

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desert, they simply disappear without a
trace.

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They're never heard from again.

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And Herodotus assumes they are buried in
the sand.

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and that somewhere under the dunes of
the Great Pantheon lies the lost army of

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Cambyses.

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Could 50,000 soldiers simply disappear?

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For more than 2,500 years, historians
have debated the unknown fate of the

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lost army of Cambyses, and whether it
even happened in the first place.

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After all, Herodotus wrote about these
events.

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nearly a century after they allegedly
took place.

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Now this story comes to us from
Herodotus and his histories. It was

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talked about this story already
existing.

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Herodotus is known as the father of
histories, but he's also been called the

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father of lies.

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So how much can we trust Herodotus on
this? We don't have a lot of other

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corroborating information.

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Did 50,000 Persian soldiers succumb to
the great sand sea?

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Or is the legend nothing more than myth?

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Some believe the ancient desert is
slowly revealing the army's fate.

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Bahrain, Egypt, 2009.

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After excavating the area around a tiny
oasis deep in the Sahara, southeast of

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the ancient ruins of Siwa, Italian
archaeologists Alfredo and Angelo

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Castiglione

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Make a remarkable discovery.

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The Castiglione brothers went in search
of the missing army of Cambyses.

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What they did was follow the caravan
routes through the western desert of

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Egypt, and eventually they did actually
come across a large number of artifacts.

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They came across bronze weapons, they
came across human bones,

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They came across various water jugs that
had actually been planted into the

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ground. And they also came across a
large amount of jewelry. And they were

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able to analyze these and come to the
conclusion that they did indeed date to

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the Persian period of occupation in
Egypt.

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And it could well be that these Italian
researchers did actually find evidence

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of this missing army.

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There's a lot of people who are
skeptical.

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Essentially, the argument is to say
those could have been by anybody. It

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could have been by any visitor. And so
it's really not clear if what they found

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was actually evidence of the lost army.

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But whether that was the lost army or
not, the artifacts they found in the

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sand tell us that there is stuff buried
in the desert still to find that can

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tell us something about the past.

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It's hard to imagine.

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what it must have been like to lose
50,000 Persian soldiers in the

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unforgiving desert.

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But forgiveness might have played a
different role for a lost city uncovered

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in southern Iraq, where some believe the
ancient ruins may be linked to the

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Garden of Eden.

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Southern Iraq, February 1854.

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A British team, led by archaeologist
John George Taylor, excavates what

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appears to be a series of barren desert
mounds.

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But incredibly, they soon uncover an
extensive network of brick walls and a

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massive ziggurat.

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They later determine these structures
are the remains of a remarkable ancient

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city buried by the sands of time.

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John George Taylor, who also crucially
found bricks that actually were

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stamped with the name of the city, and
that was Eridu.

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Eridu is considered the oldest city of
the world. It dates back to about 5400

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BC, and was actually constructed by the
ancient Sumerian culture.

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The Sumerians themselves said that Eridu
was the most ancient city.

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The Sumerians are an important
civilization for many different reasons.

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First and foremost, that they invent
writing in a system known as cuneiform,

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which is just the wedge-shaped
impressions that a reed stylus would

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make into clay tablets.

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Another important contribution that the
Sumerians give to us is the development

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of urban lifestyle.

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So the first cities.

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In these cities, we begin to find the
emergence of political elites, religious

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elites. Eridu is the first political
center of this region. And couple that

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with writing, and we start to get a real
picture of a society, really the

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beginnings of our knowledge of history.

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Soon after the discovery of Eridu, the
ancient city drew the attention of

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British Assyriologist Theopolis Pinchas.

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And his 1908 book was responsible for
inspiring a provocative yet long

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-standing theory that Eridu may have
actually been the most famous paradise

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in human history, as described in the
Bible, the Garden of

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Eden.

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The Garden of Eden in the book of
Genesis first appears in chapter 2, and

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it's placed right there at the
beginning.

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of creation.

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It's set up as a place where God creates
the human

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and puts him in this garden.

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And his job is to till it, to take care
of it.

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And soon Adam and Eve are in this
garden, living together in this idyllic

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life. The big question is, is the Garden
of Eden a real place, or is it a

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mythological place?

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Or is it a metaphor for humanity?

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Was the Garden of Eden a real location?

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A lush paradise where the first human
beings are said to have lived?

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And if so, could Eden have been located
in Eridu, the oldest human settlement

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ever discovered?

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In 2025, researchers did this amazing
study where they discovered that...

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200 irrigation canals and 4,000 branch
canals were situated in and

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around the city of Eridu to bring water
to where they wanted.

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And so what this tells us about the
environment is that it was much wetter,

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much more productive than it is now.

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The result of the irrigation engineering
was the abundance of fabulous, very,

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very well-managed gardens.

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very well-ordered, beautiful, lush,
manicured little paradises that

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proliferated in Eridu.

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It's incredible to think that this
desert wasteland was once home to

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bountiful and vibrant life of all kinds.

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But why would Eridu even be considered a
possible location for the Garden of

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Eden? Well, some point to clues
mentioned in the Bible's Book of

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Genesis. In Genesis, we're told that the
Garden of Eden has four rivers.

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They are the Tigris, the Euphrates, the
Gihon, and the Pishon. We know what the

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Tigris and Euphrates are. These are two
very famous rivers that essentially run

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all the way down through Iraq and into
the Persian Gulf.

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While many scholars think that the
Garden of Eden is a metaphor for a

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utopian paradise,

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Many people actually think it's in
ancient Mesopotamia.

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I do think the Bible gives us a real
place when it's describing Eden. The

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clues are the rivers.

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We know where the Tigris and Euphrates
are. The more challenging ones are the

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ones that have since disappeared, the
Pisan and the Gihon.

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And so we start with what do we know?
Well, we know where the Euphrates River

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is, and we know where the Tigris River
is.

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00:15:18,650 --> 00:15:22,680
And so if we're taking the text of the
Bible at face value, then... That's

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where the Garden of Eden is.

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And this is very interesting because
Eridu is right on one of these major

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rivers that we're talking about. In this
case, it's the Euphrates River.

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That's then very consistent with the
Eden story.

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While Eridu appears to be in the same
region that Scripture describes as the

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Garden of Eden, some believe another
clue can be found in ancient

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00:15:49,040 --> 00:15:50,520
Mesopotamian tales.

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surrounding the Sumerian creator god
known as Enki.

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00:15:57,000 --> 00:16:02,440
One of the prominent figures associated
with this idea that Eridu was a biblical

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Eden is Enki, patron deity of the city,
the god of wisdom, and the god of

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underwater aquifers and fresh water.

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Enki is a major figure in most of the
Sumerian creation myths. He has a very

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important role to play in the emergence
of not just humanity, but really life

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itself. He opts to create humanity.

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00:16:25,710 --> 00:16:31,610
And so what we find is early
associations of Eridu with a site of

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00:16:31,610 --> 00:16:34,310
creation, a paradise, a Mesopotamian
Eden.

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00:16:37,550 --> 00:16:42,410
The Garden of Eden story, it has to be
sort of thought of as this origin story,

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as where we come from.

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So maybe Eridu was one of the sources,
or maybe the main source for the Garden

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of Eden.

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We know Eridu was remembered fondly as
the birthplace of civilization, but the

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00:16:56,150 --> 00:17:01,030
Sumerian and Mesopotamian civilizations,
could this have been sort of what we

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00:17:01,030 --> 00:17:02,850
remember through the Garden of Eden
story?

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00:17:03,430 --> 00:17:04,429
It's possible.

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00:17:06,060 --> 00:17:10,500
It would be a remarkable discovery if
Eridu was indeed linked to the mythical

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Garden of Eden.

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The same can be said for another
legendary location, a place so decadent

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00:17:17,500 --> 00:17:22,079
it was said to be swallowed up by the
desert at God's command.

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The Arabian Peninsula.

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00:17:29,180 --> 00:17:34,640
It's home to seven sovereign nations and
some of the wealthiest cities on Earth.

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00:17:35,660 --> 00:17:42,520
Dubai is a mecca of business and luxury
trade, and home to over 86,000

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00:17:42,520 --> 00:17:48,100
millionaires. And Abu Dhabi is
considered one of the richest centers

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00:17:48,100 --> 00:17:49,880
for global finance in the world.

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00:17:50,820 --> 00:17:57,820
Yet, surrounding these opulent,
money-soaked metropolises lies nearly

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00:17:57,820 --> 00:18:01,520
one million square miles of empty
desert.

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00:18:02,700 --> 00:18:08,880
And beneath this vast and scorched
landscape lies countless ancient secrets

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00:18:08,880 --> 00:18:11,140
lost to time.

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00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:18,720
One of the interesting things about the
desert in Arabia is that structures that

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00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:24,200
were once built get buried in sand,
meaning they're preserved from the

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00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:29,240
elements. They didn't rot. They didn't
get knocked down. They're still there

239
00:18:29,240 --> 00:18:30,240
for us to discover.

240
00:18:31,240 --> 00:18:35,020
There's thousands of years of things
being buried underneath those sands. And

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00:18:35,020 --> 00:18:40,280
there are a number of accounts of lost
cities in Arabia.

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00:18:40,480 --> 00:18:46,960
So if you go later in the Islamic world,
the Arabian Nights, they talk about

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00:18:46,960 --> 00:18:49,140
lost cities, buried cities.

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00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:55,660
But then we also know that Arab culture
is an oral culture. It's an oral

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00:18:55,660 --> 00:18:59,780
tradition. So for hundreds, thousands of
years, you have these stories.

246
00:19:00,380 --> 00:19:04,080
of the cities buried underneath the
sands.

247
00:19:05,380 --> 00:19:09,600
Of all the tales of ancient cities said
to be buried in the deserts of Arabia,

248
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:16,300
the most famous is the story of a
legendary lost realm known as

249
00:19:16,300 --> 00:19:17,300
Ubar.

250
00:19:18,940 --> 00:19:24,180
There are persistent legends among the
Arabic people in the Arabian Peninsula

251
00:19:24,180 --> 00:19:26,180
of a great city.

252
00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:29,980
That became incredibly rich from
frankincense.

253
00:19:31,680 --> 00:19:35,860
Frankincense is a hard substance that
was used in funeral rites and all sorts

254
00:19:35,860 --> 00:19:37,680
of things. It was incredibly valuable.

255
00:19:38,260 --> 00:19:41,940
It would have made someone incredibly
rich to control that, and that's what

256
00:19:41,940 --> 00:19:43,720
the city of Ubar supposedly did.

257
00:19:44,240 --> 00:19:48,860
But no one knows if it's real or not,
just that it's a great, important city

258
00:19:48,860 --> 00:19:51,760
that is lost in the sands of Arabia.

259
00:19:53,460 --> 00:19:56,420
You have these stories of this ancient
city.

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00:19:56,780 --> 00:20:02,980
Uba, capital city of the frankincense
trade that grows rich and wealthy, and

261
00:20:02,980 --> 00:20:04,640
that this wealth leads to corruption.

262
00:20:05,380 --> 00:20:07,320
There's all sorts of immoral behavior.

263
00:20:08,700 --> 00:20:15,380
If you look at the oral traditions, this
great wind from God literally buries

264
00:20:15,380 --> 00:20:17,080
this city under the sands.

265
00:20:17,700 --> 00:20:23,340
And the idea there is that even the
wealthiest, most powerful cities aren't

266
00:20:23,340 --> 00:20:24,780
immune to divine retribution.

267
00:20:26,270 --> 00:20:32,150
It has been passed down through oral
lore and legends by Bedouin tribes and

268
00:20:32,150 --> 00:20:35,950
nomads in the Arabian Peninsula for
we're not quite sure how long.

269
00:20:36,170 --> 00:20:41,290
And this image of a civilization sinking
beneath the sands really caught on in

270
00:20:41,290 --> 00:20:42,290
popular imagination.

271
00:20:42,330 --> 00:20:47,810
And so in the 1930s, Bertram Thomas
picked this up and dubbed this the

272
00:20:47,810 --> 00:20:49,730
Atlantis of the Sands.

273
00:20:50,810 --> 00:20:54,070
Famed British diplomat and explorer
Bertram Thomas.

274
00:20:54,890 --> 00:21:00,330
had been travelling through the Arabian
desert in the early 1930s when he set

275
00:21:00,330 --> 00:21:05,890
out to solve the great mystery of this
legendary lost city.

276
00:21:07,510 --> 00:21:14,250
Bertram Thomas went in search of Ubar
and he spent time

277
00:21:14,250 --> 00:21:15,990
with the Bedouin.

278
00:21:16,610 --> 00:21:20,850
The Bedouin have been there for many,
many thousands of years. It's obviously

279
00:21:20,850 --> 00:21:21,850
their home.

280
00:21:22,140 --> 00:21:25,880
And they fully believed in the existence
of this city.

281
00:21:26,800 --> 00:21:32,020
And Thomas crossed the desert, and he
got to a certain point, and they

282
00:21:32,020 --> 00:21:36,800
basically said, that is the path that
will eventually lead you to it.

283
00:21:37,180 --> 00:21:42,440
But unfortunately, due to the provisions
that he had, he couldn't deviate from

284
00:21:42,440 --> 00:21:44,740
the actual course that he was on.

285
00:21:45,340 --> 00:21:49,140
All he was able to do was record all the
stories and the folklore.

286
00:21:49,870 --> 00:21:53,090
that the Bedouin gave him and continued
his journey.

287
00:21:53,430 --> 00:21:56,150
So that was the end of that particular
third.

288
00:21:57,770 --> 00:21:59,530
February 5th, 1992.

289
00:22:00,070 --> 00:22:05,690
A bombshell article published on the
front page of the New York Times makes a

290
00:22:05,690 --> 00:22:11,390
shocking claim that the fabled lost city
of Ubar may have finally been found.

291
00:22:12,090 --> 00:22:15,810
An American explorer by the name of
Nicholas Clatt.

292
00:22:16,250 --> 00:22:22,470
working with the British explorer Ranulf
Fiennes decided to use

293
00:22:22,470 --> 00:22:29,290
satellite images to follow the different
Bedouin routes and see if they

294
00:22:29,290 --> 00:22:32,550
could trace the actual location of this
lost city.

295
00:22:33,350 --> 00:22:39,770
They used satellite technology and
declassified images from NASA to have a

296
00:22:39,770 --> 00:22:46,460
look over that broad area and what they
found was that a number of roots

297
00:22:46,460 --> 00:22:49,900
converged around the site of Shiza in
Oman.

298
00:22:50,160 --> 00:22:55,180
The conclusion that they came to was
that this was ancient Ubar. They had

299
00:22:55,180 --> 00:22:58,080
found the center of the frankincense
trade.

300
00:22:58,640 --> 00:23:02,900
But a number of archaeologists aren't
quite sure about this conclusion.

301
00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:09,760
Was the Atlantis of the Sands really
discovered in the southeastern corner of

302
00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:14,180
the Arabian Peninsula and in a village
now known as Shiza?

303
00:23:14,670 --> 00:23:20,750
While it remains a controversial claim,
local investigations have yielded even

304
00:23:20,750 --> 00:23:23,090
more intriguing discoveries.

305
00:23:24,170 --> 00:23:28,810
With Klatt's expedition, they were the
ones to discover that there's clearly

306
00:23:28,810 --> 00:23:33,910
something quite extensive that was there
before at what we now call the village

307
00:23:33,910 --> 00:23:34,910
of Schitter.

308
00:23:35,550 --> 00:23:41,410
There's some rock walls, there's a well
that was accessible, so it did...

309
00:23:41,770 --> 00:23:46,310
fulfill a lot of the criteria for a
settlement in the desert. And it wasn't

310
00:23:46,310 --> 00:23:47,650
insignificant by any means.

311
00:23:48,510 --> 00:23:55,410
They found evidence of a eight-sided
fortress that had collapsed in

312
00:23:55,410 --> 00:23:56,410
on itself.

313
00:23:56,510 --> 00:24:02,690
And this, of course, fitted very well
with the lost city of Ubar. The idea

314
00:24:02,690 --> 00:24:06,690
that it had been quite literally
swallowed up by the sands itself.

315
00:24:08,930 --> 00:24:13,660
Most of us think... that there are so
many of these cities that are buried

316
00:24:13,660 --> 00:24:18,320
underneath the sands and waiting to be
rediscovered. It's possible that what

317
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:20,260
Nicholas Clapp found was Uba.

318
00:24:20,580 --> 00:24:24,160
It's also possible that this was another
fort.

319
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,300
We don't know what happened for sure.

320
00:24:28,380 --> 00:24:34,640
If a legendary lost city truly vanished
beneath the Arabian sands, perhaps it's

321
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:36,540
not the only mystery hidden there.

322
00:24:37,680 --> 00:24:43,180
Because beyond the ruins of Ubar lies
the empty quarter of the largest sand

323
00:24:43,180 --> 00:24:49,140
desert on Earth, where it is said that
powerful, supernatural beings known as

324
00:24:49,140 --> 00:24:53,040
jinn haunt the shifting sands.

325
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:03,460
In southern Arabia, a giant ocean of
sand stretches across more than 250,000

326
00:25:03,460 --> 00:25:06,920
square miles, an area about the size of
Texas.

327
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:12,540
This massive desert covers a quarter of
the Arabian Peninsula and is populated

328
00:25:12,540 --> 00:25:16,520
only by nomadic Bedouin tribes and oil
field workers.

329
00:25:17,420 --> 00:25:23,160
The region is almost completely
uninhabited, which is why it has come to

330
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:25,760
be known as the Empty Quarter.

331
00:25:27,120 --> 00:25:31,460
The Empty Quarter Desert is a really
unique place. There's lots of deserts

332
00:25:31,460 --> 00:25:34,800
all over the world, and many of them
feel vast.

333
00:25:35,150 --> 00:25:39,810
and uninhabited and remote, but none of
them can match the empty quarter.

334
00:25:40,450 --> 00:25:44,750
Humans have still been unable to tame
the wilderness of the empty quarter

335
00:25:44,750 --> 00:25:48,330
desert. They can travel through, but
even that's a challenge.

336
00:25:48,650 --> 00:25:53,350
There's nothing that matches the
intensity of that solitude and that

337
00:25:53,350 --> 00:25:55,170
disconnection from the rest of the
world.

338
00:25:55,930 --> 00:25:59,330
But according to those who have dared to
venture into this vast and harsh

339
00:25:59,330 --> 00:26:04,880
wilderness, A dark secret haunts the
shifting sands, and the empty quarter

340
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:07,880
may not be as empty as it seems.

341
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:14,640
There have been lots of stories from the
empty quarter about people's encounters

342
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:16,560
with supernatural beings.

343
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:23,140
There have been people camping out who
have heard footsteps and crowds of

344
00:26:23,140 --> 00:26:24,480
people gathering around their tent.

345
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:27,700
There have been oil workers who've seen
tracks.

346
00:26:28,010 --> 00:26:31,750
in the deserts that have disappeared the
next day. All sorts of strange things

347
00:26:31,750 --> 00:26:34,410
happen that can't be explained.

348
00:26:35,430 --> 00:26:41,210
I've not had any experience myself, but
friends of mine, for example, have

349
00:26:41,210 --> 00:26:46,770
expressed that lights go on and off,
that they hear voices at a certain time,

350
00:26:46,790 --> 00:26:50,370
particularly at night, and other
phenomena like this.

351
00:26:50,750 --> 00:26:53,730
Perhaps as listeners to these stories,
they might seem a little bit far

352
00:26:53,730 --> 00:26:57,720
-fetched. But when you're actually
experiencing them, they can obviously

353
00:26:57,720 --> 00:26:59,700
feel very real and very scary.

354
00:27:00,380 --> 00:27:07,160
The only people that really occupy this
area is the Bedouin. And they see

355
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:13,080
the Empty Quarter as a spirit in its own
right. They believe it has supernatural

356
00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:14,080
entities.

357
00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:19,360
Are the hands of the Empty Quarter
inhabited by some kind of supernatural

358
00:27:19,360 --> 00:27:20,360
presence?

359
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:25,980
And if so, exactly who or what are
people encountering in the desert?

360
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:33,380
The answer may lie in the pages of the
Koran, which describes a type of ghostly

361
00:27:33,380 --> 00:27:36,140
beings known as jinn.

362
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:42,220
The Koran talks about the jinn as being
created from fire without smoke.

363
00:27:42,900 --> 00:27:48,980
They can assume different forms, they
can take different shapes, and so...

364
00:27:49,320 --> 00:27:52,800
You have places that are considered
haunted by the jinn.

365
00:27:53,300 --> 00:27:58,420
One of the names for a person that is
considered insane in Arabic is Majnun.

366
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:05,640
This person is possessed by the jinn. So
you have all sorts of stories of people

367
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:10,780
who encounter these beings that may well
be jinn in the empty quarter.

368
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:17,160
From the mid-19th to the 20th century,
tales of mystical jinn haunting the

369
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:21,460
empty quarter were introduced to the
Western world in books by British

370
00:28:21,460 --> 00:28:27,840
explorers like Bertram Thomas's Arabia
Felix in 1932 and Wilfred

371
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:31,360
Thesiger's Arabian Sands in 1959.

372
00:28:32,900 --> 00:28:39,200
Bertram Thomas and Wilfred Thesiger
spent many years investigating

373
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:44,740
the folklore and traditions of the
Bedouin of the Empty Quarter.

374
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:46,840
The Bedouin would be...

375
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:52,540
highly respectful of locations where
they felt that the jinn were located.

376
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:57,920
They would make offerings, they would
appease them, they would know that this

377
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:02,060
was a place that was haunted by the
jinn, and they would not go anywhere

378
00:29:02,060 --> 00:29:03,060
near.

379
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:07,720
Let the juror describe in his book,
Arabian Sands, where one of his

380
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:13,180
companions seems to be inhabited by a
spirit, and is...

381
00:29:13,420 --> 00:29:16,320
acting very oddly all the way through
the night and goes through a process

382
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:20,020
that's almost like an exorcism. And the
next day is returned to normal.

383
00:29:20,700 --> 00:29:26,140
And Fissinger writes about it quite
objectively almost, from a distance. But

384
00:29:26,140 --> 00:29:29,720
for his companions, this seems
relatively normal. It's very much part

385
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:31,520
of the life that he's observing.

386
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:36,360
The thought of jinn possessing people in
the empty quarters is terrifying.

387
00:29:37,100 --> 00:29:40,260
But in modern times, experts have
theorized that these...

388
00:29:40,540 --> 00:29:46,760
Strange experiences are caused not by
supernatural beings, but rather

389
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:48,680
the desert itself.

390
00:29:49,420 --> 00:29:55,980
A lot of the stories about djinns in the
desert might have their origin in

391
00:29:55,980 --> 00:29:57,300
natural phenomena.

392
00:29:57,560 --> 00:30:03,700
You get phenomena called the singing
sands, a sort of low-pitched...

393
00:30:03,980 --> 00:30:09,120
groaning sound, coming from sound,
moving on sound, creating a really

394
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:10,440
strange noise.

395
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:16,080
You also get mirages that are very
unlike what you get in everyday

396
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:20,800
travelling. You get things that look
like mountains, which are usually

397
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:25,000
reflections of really small boulders
that have been reflected upwards, and in

398
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:26,000
fact is imaginary.

399
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:31,580
All of that taken together, that's
almost certainly partly the source of

400
00:30:31,580 --> 00:30:32,580
some of those stories.

401
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:38,200
A number of these incidents can be
explained by extreme heat, dehydration,

402
00:30:38,260 --> 00:30:43,020
feeling of disorientation that the
desert produces across the empty

403
00:30:43,020 --> 00:30:47,700
quarter. But nevertheless, these can be
very powerful experiences.

404
00:30:48,340 --> 00:30:51,860
And for a lot of people, it's something
much more complex than that.

405
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:58,920
I believe that the empty quarter is
alive because the Bedouin people tell us

406
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:01,880
so. And they've been there for thousands
of years.

407
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:05,180
They've seen it in every aspect.

408
00:31:05,620 --> 00:31:11,440
They know every part of it. So if they
tell us that jinn exist, we should

409
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:12,940
adhere to their words.

410
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:19,120
Whether the strange experiences that
take place in the empty quarter are the

411
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:24,480
result of supernatural entities or
natural phenomena remains a fascinating

412
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:25,480
mystery.

413
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:32,040
But another intriguing enigma lies in an
ancient tomb.

414
00:31:32,540 --> 00:31:37,900
buried in the sands of northern Africa,
which some believe was the final resting

415
00:31:37,900 --> 00:31:42,520
place of ancient Egypt's most
controversial pharaoh.

416
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:50,980
The Valley of the Kings, southern Egypt.

417
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:58,100
From the 16th to the 11th century BC,
ancient Egyptians laid their great

418
00:31:58,100 --> 00:32:01,880
pharaohs to rest in this royal cemetery,
including...

419
00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:04,860
the extraordinary burial of King
Tutankhamun.

420
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:11,800
But in 1907, British archaeologist
Edward Ayrton discovered one very

421
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:17,740
mysterious tomb among the rest, and
whoever is buried here has been shrouded

422
00:32:17,740 --> 00:32:20,060
in mystery for well over a century.

423
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:28,200
It is a small, roughly cut tomb with a
single, roughly

424
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,460
square burial chamber.

425
00:32:31,310 --> 00:32:37,170
The problem is that items such as the
coffin and a gilded wooden shrine that

426
00:32:37,170 --> 00:32:41,790
would go around the sarcophagus and the
body have been deliberately damaged and

427
00:32:41,790 --> 00:32:43,870
at a certain point the names removed.

428
00:32:44,490 --> 00:32:50,010
The single most glaring instance of this
is that down a short inscription along

429
00:32:50,010 --> 00:32:55,070
the front of the coffin there is a
section missing. We just see the bare

430
00:32:55,070 --> 00:32:56,070
wood.

431
00:32:56,220 --> 00:32:59,240
This almost certainly was the name of a
king or another member of the royal

432
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:01,900
family that had been deliberately
removed at some point.

433
00:33:02,700 --> 00:33:05,980
After opening the coffin on which the
royal name was surprisingly stripped

434
00:33:05,980 --> 00:33:12,940
away, Edward Ayrton and his team exhumed
the mummified body inside and discovered

435
00:33:12,940 --> 00:33:14,560
something even more shocking.

436
00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:20,560
The right side of its skull appeared to
have been severely damaged.

437
00:33:21,100 --> 00:33:25,180
It's hard to tell if this was a victim
of murder.

438
00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:31,060
But what we can see is the tomb doesn't
seem to have had the same care as you'd

439
00:33:31,060 --> 00:33:35,540
expect from a tomb in the Valley of the
Kings. The conclusion we can draw from

440
00:33:35,540 --> 00:33:41,500
that is that this person was not well
loved and that he was supposed to be

441
00:33:41,500 --> 00:33:43,120
erased from the collective memory.

442
00:33:43,780 --> 00:33:49,060
Why did the ancient Egyptians abandon
centuries of sacred tradition and ravage

443
00:33:49,060 --> 00:33:50,340
a royal burial chamber?

444
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:54,100
And who was the nameless occupant laid
to rest in this...

445
00:33:54,410 --> 00:33:55,410
Bizarre tomb.

446
00:33:56,790 --> 00:34:01,670
It's such a profound mystery that unlike
other tombs dedicated to identifiable

447
00:34:01,670 --> 00:34:07,810
pharaohs, archaeologists can only refer
to this site by its catalogue number,

448
00:34:08,250 --> 00:34:09,670
KV55.

449
00:34:10,850 --> 00:34:17,090
Tomb KV55 is a real anomaly, and that is
because in most other Egyptian burials,

450
00:34:17,090 --> 00:34:20,489
you would have the tomb, the coffin, and
the body.

451
00:34:20,790 --> 00:34:23,330
The name on the coffin is the name of
the body.

452
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:29,620
So you have a coherent story told to us
by this evidence, in whom KV55, the

453
00:34:29,620 --> 00:34:34,560
challenge for archaeologists is to try
and find out and untangle these pieces

454
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:38,880
of evidence to answer the question, who
is buried in KV55?

455
00:34:40,199 --> 00:34:45,600
What's interesting is that around the
burial are four what they refer to as

456
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:46,620
magic bricks.

457
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:52,340
Now these are supposedly to protect the
person that's interred within the

458
00:34:52,340 --> 00:34:58,900
coffin. And when they were able to read
the hieroglyphs on these bricks, it gave

459
00:34:58,900 --> 00:35:02,300
the throne name of the pharaoh
Akhenaten.

460
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:09,460
Akhenaten was a pharaoh during the 18th
dynasty of Egyptian history in the New

461
00:35:09,460 --> 00:35:14,720
Kingdom. He was extremely important
because one of the most radical things

462
00:35:14,720 --> 00:35:17,540
in Egyptian history happened under his
rule.

463
00:35:18,510 --> 00:35:24,890
What Akhenaten did was essentially take
the pantheon of Egyptian gods and he

464
00:35:24,890 --> 00:35:30,970
shifted it towards a religion in which
the Aten, the Sundis, was the sole god

465
00:35:30,970 --> 00:35:32,090
of ancient Egypt.

466
00:35:32,330 --> 00:35:38,970
This was absolutely radical and unheard
of in Egyptian society until this point.

467
00:35:40,270 --> 00:35:45,990
We also know that a very important part
of Akhenaten's story is that he was

468
00:35:45,990 --> 00:35:46,990
deliberately forgotten.

469
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:48,880
very shortly after his lifetime.

470
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:55,600
Just as Akhenaten himself defaced
monuments devoted to the worship of

471
00:35:55,600 --> 00:36:01,520
these old gods which he wanted to get
rid of, following his own death and the

472
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:04,760
end of his lifetime, his own name was
erased.

473
00:36:05,540 --> 00:36:10,320
His temples were dismantled in such a
way that his image would be invisible.

474
00:36:11,500 --> 00:36:16,620
For a civilization that is so concerned
with immortality, that is so concerned

475
00:36:16,620 --> 00:36:22,420
with building shrines to these really
important beings, to erase them, to

476
00:36:22,420 --> 00:36:26,360
destroy them, to alter them in any way,
tells you there's a huge turning point

477
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:27,860
there about who this person was.

478
00:36:29,140 --> 00:36:35,220
But then we also know that the son of
Akhenaten is Tutankhamen.

479
00:36:36,180 --> 00:36:40,280
Tutankhamen goes back to the old
Egyptian religions, defacing the kinds

480
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:41,420
of things that his father has done.

481
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:46,980
Does the fact that Akhenaten was erased
from history by the ancient Egyptians,

482
00:36:47,180 --> 00:36:52,760
and even rejected by his own son,
Tutankhamen, suggest that the damaged

483
00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:57,340
mummy found in tomb KV35 is, in fact,
Akhenaten himself?

484
00:36:58,360 --> 00:37:05,280
In 2021, an Italian team reconstructed
the face of the individual

485
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:07,420
from KV55.

486
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:14,020
And eventually, this impression revealed
who could be inside.

487
00:37:14,580 --> 00:37:19,040
The announcement was that this could be
the face of Akhenaten.

488
00:37:19,300 --> 00:37:24,200
But of course, whenever a face is
reconstructed, there's always a certain

489
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:25,240
amount of bias.

490
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:30,780
So when we look upon that face, we can
only but speculate.

491
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:33,980
Beyond that, it's all a mystery.

492
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:41,900
March 2013.

493
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:48,100
A team of researchers exploring the Sea
of Galilee in northern Israel announced

494
00:37:48,100 --> 00:37:49,800
an incredible discovery.

495
00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:55,140
They have detected a large, cone-shaped
structure.

496
00:37:55,850 --> 00:37:58,210
Buried on the seafloor.

497
00:37:58,610 --> 00:38:05,130
Israeli scientists discovered this
massive mound of rocks underneath the

498
00:38:05,130 --> 00:38:10,790
Sea of Galilee using sonar. They used
scanning techniques and they found this

499
00:38:10,790 --> 00:38:17,310
230 foot wide, 60,000 ton round pile of
rocks.

500
00:38:18,270 --> 00:38:24,030
Upon further investigation, a dive team
confirmed that this was not a natural

501
00:38:24,030 --> 00:38:25,030
formation.

502
00:38:25,230 --> 00:38:30,990
but a deliberate, man-made construction
of layered basalt stones.

503
00:38:31,730 --> 00:38:37,370
You have this massive stone structure.
It's about 30 feet below the Sea of

504
00:38:37,370 --> 00:38:42,950
Galilee. So it tells us that there's
clearly some kind of man-made monument.

505
00:38:43,730 --> 00:38:48,570
Something was important enough that
people created this enormous mound.

506
00:38:49,190 --> 00:38:51,410
This is a huge mystery.

507
00:38:52,110 --> 00:38:54,550
Is this some kind of temple?

508
00:38:55,130 --> 00:38:57,930
Is it some kind of burial mound?

509
00:38:59,210 --> 00:39:04,230
We don't know what it's doing there or
how it got there. But there it is, lying

510
00:39:04,230 --> 00:39:05,490
beneath the Sea of Galilee.

511
00:39:06,750 --> 00:39:11,890
How did such a massive megalith end up
on the bottom of the Sea of Galilee,

512
00:39:12,010 --> 00:39:14,930
where according to the Bible, Jesus
walked on water?

513
00:39:16,820 --> 00:39:21,020
Archaeologists found an extraordinary
clue when they determined that this

514
00:39:21,020 --> 00:39:27,800
mysterious ruin is more than 6,000 years
old, which means that it dates back

515
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:31,120
to long before the time of Jesus Christ.

516
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:36,680
It's such an extraordinary story. This
huge mound of stones found underneath

517
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:41,340
the Sea of Galilee, probably placed
there when it was on land, and then the

518
00:39:41,340 --> 00:39:42,500
sea simply moved over it.

519
00:39:43,660 --> 00:39:45,620
And it says a few things to us.

520
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:49,060
One of them is the stories from the
Bible. We think that's as far back as

521
00:39:49,060 --> 00:39:50,060
you go.

522
00:39:50,240 --> 00:39:54,580
And what we find out in the Holy Land,
history goes back much farther than we

523
00:39:54,580 --> 00:39:56,400
realize. There's stuff still to find.

524
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:01,920
What's interesting is that there must
have been one hell of a sophisticated

525
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:03,980
society behind this.

526
00:40:04,240 --> 00:40:07,420
And if that's the case, then who created
it? Who made this?

527
00:40:07,740 --> 00:40:11,900
Before it was quite clearly drowned
beneath the waters by some kind of

528
00:40:11,900 --> 00:40:16,960
tectonic... activity that actually
shifted the whole land that we still

529
00:40:16,960 --> 00:40:17,960
don't understand.

530
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:24,100
But now the massive structure beneath
the Sea of Galilee remains an enigma.

531
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:28,660
But what's undeniable is that the Near
East and North Africa are home to

532
00:40:28,660 --> 00:40:34,820
countless buried pieces of human history
that we have only begun to uncover.

533
00:40:35,460 --> 00:40:38,260
This area of the world is really
interesting because

534
00:40:39,050 --> 00:40:45,150
So much of what we have now in terms of
our modern civilizations, the groundwork

535
00:40:45,150 --> 00:40:48,470
of that was laid all these years ago in
these places.

536
00:40:48,950 --> 00:40:53,410
Despite the fact that the sand dunes and
the heat that make it very, very

537
00:40:53,410 --> 00:40:57,330
difficult to work in, there's so much
there still to discover, particularly

538
00:40:57,330 --> 00:41:01,810
because we find out so much about who we
are now from these investigations.

539
00:41:03,030 --> 00:41:04,830
These are the oldest civilizations.

540
00:41:05,690 --> 00:41:10,130
on Earth that have been buried, that
have been lost to time. And we are only

541
00:41:10,130 --> 00:41:13,410
now beginning to rediscover these
ancient worlds.

542
00:41:13,790 --> 00:41:18,870
And yet there are so many mysteries that
we still have not answered.

543
00:41:19,090 --> 00:41:22,810
And the only solution is we have to keep
digging.

544
00:41:24,850 --> 00:41:31,210
Could the mysterious monument beneath
the Sea of Galilee be the last trace of

545
00:41:31,210 --> 00:41:32,270
a forgotten culture?

546
00:41:33,090 --> 00:41:38,180
It's a stunning reminder that In these
cradles of civilization, some of

547
00:41:38,180 --> 00:41:44,860
humanity's oldest mysteries may still be
buried beneath sand, stone, and water.

548
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:52,280
And while we continue to unearth lost
tombs, temples, and ancient cities,

549
00:41:52,340 --> 00:41:58,480
it will take many lifetimes for the
deserts of Mesopotamia and Egypt to

550
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:04,280
reveal their secrets that for now remain
unexplained.

551
00:42:04,330 --> 00:42:08,880
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