Original subtitles

2,000 years ago,

The mountain fortress of masada

Witnesses the final battle of an apocalyptic war...

...Between the jews of judea and the roman empire.

Once they were faced with the romans,

It was life or death.

A few hundred rebels

Defy the mightiest empire of the ancient world.

It's gonna take you out

Whether it's a killing blow or not.

Is the war foretold in these mysterious texts

From the time of christ?

The dead sea scrolls.

What was in those caves

Was the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

Today, revolutionary findings in a tunnel

Deep beneath jerusalem

Revealed the deadly secrets of these cataclysmic events.

The romans destroyed jerusalem down to its foundations.

Who are the people defying the will of rome?

What truth is contained in their scrolls'

Doomsday prophecy?

To solve these mysteries, we'll venture deep into desert caves,

Reconstruct a king's mountain lair,

And unearth new evidence of an epic conflict

To reveal the dark secrets of the dead sea scrolls.

... Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

This is masada in modern day israel,

A magnificent royal palace perched 1,500 feet

Above the shores of the dead sea.

The palace was built in the first century b.C.

By the king of judea,

Herod the great.

What we have here is not only palace, palatial fortress,

But it's actually a villa in the middle of nowhere.

Masada is an extraordinary

Mountain top mega structure.

A hanging palace sits inside the fortress.

It is constructed on three terraces above cliffs

Nearly 1,500 feet high.

It houses a barracks and armory.

Even a centrally heated bathhouse.

The palace is testament

To the huge ambitions of its ruler...

Herod.

And buried within the palace,

Texts of strange holy jewish verse written in hebrew

Dating back 2,000 years.

Secret documents left by a mysterious people

Who write a terrifying prophecy

Of a coming apocalyptic war.

Dr. Guy stiebel from tel aviv university,

Investigates the secrets of herod's palace.

He wants to uncover the meaning of the doomsday prophecy

And what it foretells of a cataclysmic event at masada.

The fact that we have here a remnant few scrolls

That ended up here at masada,

We can correlate it with archaeological find

That shed new light on our understanding.

The year is 73 a.D.

Herod has now been dead for seven decades.

Masada is no longer a royal palace.

It's in the hands of jewish rebels holding out

Against the most powerful

Fighting force in the ancient world...

The roman army.

What causes this extraordinary transformation?

And what is the truth behind this mysterious prophecy?

Guy believes clues lie

With an astonishing engineering achievement that allows herod

To spend as long as he wants in his mountain fortress.

Herod's palace has an extraordinary water supply

Built into the belly of the mountain.

Cut deep into the rocks are 12 mighty cisterns,

Each the size of a house.

An aqueduct feeds the cisterns with floodwater

Collected during the winter rains.

The aqueduct is covered by a waterproof render.

The cisterns can hold 10 million gallons of water in total.

They fill herod's luxurious baths and swimming pools,

Providing him with an almost never ending source of water.

King herod the great did it in a very grand and lavish way

Building here, five palaces.

Just imagine, three bathhouses.

Even the swimming pool on top of masada.

Guy wants to know if strange finds within the palace

Are connected to this engineering marvel.

And help explain what happens here

To turn history on its head.

You need to look for something

That looked like a mikvah, an immersion pool.

A mikvah, a jewish immersion pool

Is used to achieve ritual purity vital before worshiping god.

In the center of the ruins,

Guy examines a mysterious stepped structure.

What we can see is a huge mikvah for here.

We have the steps that can allow me going all the way down.

Guy believes these ritual baths are evidence

That the rebels belonged to a strict jewish religious sect.

But who are these rebels and how are they connected

To the prophecy of a coming apocalyptic war?

Clues may lie just a few miles away.

This is the dead sea. The lowest point on earth.

Here in 1946,

A local bedouin makes an extraordinary discovery.

It will transform our understanding

Of what happens at masada.

He was looking for a lost goat

When he came to the entrance to a cave.

He decided to throw a stone into the cave

To see if he could flush out the goat.

Instead of hearing the stone hit rock,

He hears it smash pottery.

He enters the cave to investigate.

What was in those caves was the greatest

Archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

Hidden behind a narrow entrance,

Lies strangely shaped ceramic jars.

Curled up inside are ancient treasures,

Delicate scrolls of hebrew writing.

Some date from 200 years before jesus.

Others are written during his lifetime.

One of them is over 20 feet long and contains

Almost the entire book of isaiah from the old testament.

These battered parchments

Become known as the dead sea scrolls,

The oldest biblical texts in the world.

Today, the dead sea scrolls are here

In the shrine of the book at the israel museum.

Almost one million people visit this museum to see the scrolls

Each year.

The giant isaiah scroll has a place of honor.

Can clues to solve the mystery

Of what happens at masada be found here?

Pnina shor from the israel antiquities authority

Is the curator of the dead sea scrolls.

This is a sample of one of the big scrolls.

We have five of them really well preserved.

The scrolls are 1,000 years

Older than any other existing biblical text.

The first seven scrolls that were found

Were in a very good condition.

And the reason for that is that they were found in jars,

Wrapped in linen,

And therefore, this is what preserved them.

The almost perfect conditions

Inside the desert caves

Also helped the scrolls to survive 2,000 years.

Today, pnina and her team

Are deciphering every last word and mark on them.

They make surprising new discoveries.

We're now going through material

That has not been deciphered yet

Because we couldn't see any of the ink on these fragments

And we are discovering new fragments.

They photograph the scrolls

With a special camera developed by nasa.

It allows them to analyze

The parchment under different light conditions.

Sacred words lost for centuries emerge

When they combine the images.

Can you please show me from both sides?

Today, 70 years after their discovery,

The scrolls are still giving up new secrets.

Here.

Yeah, as you can see, this is pretty clear.

This fragment reveals a word missing

From a biblical scroll.

It's the word israel.

- Ah, israel? - Yeah.

The scrolls are the greatest

Biblical treasures of all time.

It shows us how a minute fragment

Can actually help biblical studies

And biblical research today.

But who wrote these mysterious scrolls?

And what do they reveal of the mysterious prophecy

Of an apocalyptic battle at masada?

The discovery of the scrolls raised a number of questions.

Who wrote the scrolls? Where were they brought from?

Why were they deposited in the caves?

It was only further archaeological exploration

Of this area that is excavating more of the archeological sites

That we would be able to answer those questions.

Archaeologists discover more caves

And more scrolls along the dead sea.

One cave is a treasure trove of intriguing clues.

This is the opening to cave 11.

This cave, typical of the caves in the limestone cliffs

Along the shore of the dead sea is a natural cave,

Which is very rugged.

Here, explorers find traditional biblical scrolls,

But also discover ancient texts that never make the bible,

Including a scroll predicting a violent cataclysm.

One of the scrolls that was found here

Is a copy of the war scroll,

Which describes the apocalyptic war at the end of days

Between the sons of light and the sons of darkness.

Does this doomsday prophecy

Explain why jewish rebels

Hold masada against the mast ranks of romans?

And what does it foretell of an apocalyptic war

Between the forces of good

And the forces of evil?

The dead sea, israel.

2,000 years ago

A mysterious people hide their holiest documents,

Ancient biblical texts on its shores.

The scrolls are never retrieved.

Does a doomsday prophecy found in a text

Called the war scroll help explain why?

To find out, investigators first need

To identify the writers of the scrolls.

They believe clues can be found in caves

Along the dead sea.

The remains of approximately 1,000 different scrolls

Were found in 11 caves in this area.

A cave a half mile

From where the scrolls are first discovered

Proves to be the richest of them all.

Inside it,

The earliest copy of the 10 commandments in existence.

And around it, 15,000 scattered fragments

Of more than 600 scrolls.

Some can be assembled and deciphered

Like the first three chapters of the book of genesis.

Others have crumbled into pieces

So small they still elude descriptions.

Could they hold clues to who writes the dead sea scrolls

And their prophecy of apocalyptic doom?

Dr. Eshbal ratzon from haifa and ariel universities,

Is part of an international team

Racing to decipher two fragmented scrolls.

She's working on 66 mysterious pieces that could contain clues

To identify the writers of the scrolls.

My work is working with puzzles.

This particular puzzle gives us a glimpse into a document

That was preserved for 2,000 years in the desert.

Pioneering ultra high-resolution photography

Means eshbal can now read the words

Of even the tiniest scroll fragments.

She moves the pieces around on her computer screen

To try to put them back together.

It's a 2,000-year-old electronic jigsaw puzzle.

We got lucky because we got most of the fragments

From the edges of the puzzle.

Eshbal discovers that the writer of this scroll

Is leaving mysterious notes between the columns.

I just had a hunch that these two notes were connected.

Maybe just the scribe just ran out of space and he turned.

So it was able to join these bunch of fragments

With these bunch fragments.

I got a whole column from margin to margin.

This pioneering technology

And eshbal's intuition leads to a vital breakthrough,

Revealing that the scroll one of the last to be deciphered

Is a religious calendar.

It's a very unique calendar.

We don't know it from elsewhere

Except from the dead sea scrolls.

This calendar is a clue

That can reveal who writes the scrolls.

The ruling jewish priests in the temple of jerusalem

Follow a lunar calendar with 354 days and a year.

On the new moon, high priests

Make offerings of fruit and grains

And sacrifice animals to please their god.

The writers of the scrolls reject these offerings

And instead become obsessed with purification,

Immersing in cold water at least twice a day.

They decide to follow their own calendar with 364 days

In a year based on the movement of the sun.

This was a huge step.

It made this sect separate from the rest of the jewish groups.

With the calendar, eshbal can solve the puzzle

Of who wrote the dead sea scrolls.

The group that is associated with these calendar refers

To themselves in other dead sea scrolls as the yahad

Or the sons of righteousness or the sons of light.

But who are the sons of light?

And what happens to them?

2,000 years ago, the sect,

Just like the very first christians

Believe the world is about to end.

They prepare for a conflict at the end of days

And preach about the coming apocalypse.

They outline this doomsday prophecy in a text

Known as the war scroll.

And now it looks like their prediction is coming true.

The people of judea are on the brink

Of an uprising against their roman masters,

One that will culminate in a final battle

At herod's one time palace, masada.

What causes this huge revolt?

Can clues be found 70 miles away

On the mediterranean coast of israel?

Is this jewish revolt

The prophesied battle between the sons of light

And the sons of darkness?

The dead sea scrolls

Hundreds of sacred texts dating to the time of christ.

Today, new technology is deciphering

The last of the scrolls,

Proving they belong to a mysterious jewish sect...

The sons of light.

One of their texts, the war scroll,

Prophesizes an apocalyptic showdown

Between the forces of good and evil.

Is a final battle at masada that conflict?

Clues may be found here 70 miles

From where the scrolls are discovered.

This is the city of caesarea on israel's mediterranean coast.

It is built by king herod in the first century b.C.

Herod named the city's caesarea in honor of his imperial master,

Caesar augustus.

Today, this ancient port city

Is one of the largest archaeological sites in israel.

Peter gendleman from the israel antiquities authority

Excavates a part of the city.

You see the new piece from the temple.

Look, you see it's only small portion,

Let's say a tenth of the original days.

His dig unearthed the remains of a temple.

Look how big...

So it's originally,

It was more or less that big.

The size of the base tells peter the original column

Must be huge compared with any other column on the site.

It's one of the largest columns that was found in caesarea.

And the temple itself,

It's one of the largest that was built in this area.

This is only one among many

Imperial roman buildings here.

During the first century a.D.,

The roman empire takes judea under direct rule.

This vast city becomes its base.

Peter's excavation reveals how much the romans invest

In their new headquarters.

It's remains of the floor made of roman concrete

With imported with volcanic material

Brought from the napoli bay.

The romans import the ingredients

For this concrete from as far away as Italy

And bring the know how to use it.

Let's try to put it together and see footprints

Still be seen on the top of it.

It's a footprint of special kind of boots

That was used by roman legionnaires.

So clearly evidence of the new technologies

That come with the roman to the east.

The scale of the roman occupation

Can be seen at caesarea.

Here, the romans build on a grand scale.

Just like in rome, where the empire shows off its wealth

And power with lavish public buildings.

But peter thinks not all the buildings

Are for roman citizens.

He investigates the ruins of a mysterious structure.

Can see it was a sizable building.

Very good masonry, not look like private dwelling,

But most like some public building.

Peter believes this is one of the main

Synagogues of the city.

All this area probably was inhabited by jews.

It shows caesarea is a multi-cultural metropolis

Where each group can worship their own gods.

But peter thinks the jewish population resent being treated

As second class citizens by the romans.

There was start some struggle between the jewish community

And the romans in the city.

They want to be equal roman citizens.

Jewish resentment turns to violence.

In 66 a.D., the caesarean jews riot.

The romans will not tolerate that.

It's finished by killing of most of caesarean jews

And rest was expelled from the city

For more than generation.

The romans rule their vast empire with an iron fist.

And following the events in caesarea

The province of judea becomes a hotbed of dissent,

Jewish rebels wipe out the roman garrison in jerusalem

And declare an independent jewish state.

The revolt spreads like wildfire.

So the romans send 60,000 troops to crush the rebellion.

They rampaged through judea,

Slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people.

Is this the war between good and evil foretold

In the dead sea scrolls prophecy?

What clues are revealed by another strange discovery

Alongside the dead sea?

A brutal war rages between the jews of judea

And the roman empire.

Does a doomsday prophecy and one of the dead sea scrolls

Predict the final outcome of this war?

Clues may lie here.

Next to the cave, where most scrolls are found

Are the ruins of an unusual walled settlement.

It's called qumran.

Beside it, row upon row of mysterious stone mounds.

Beneath the mounds,

Archaeologists unearth more than 70 skeletons,

Each buried in the same distinctive way.

The bodies lie all alone in six-foot deep pits

Without any grave goods.

All lie on their backs with their hands

Resting on their hips.

And their heads pointing south

Towards the scorching midday sun.

Are these the sons of light,

The authors of the dead sea scrolls prophecy?

There are graves all over here.

Here, look, look at this structure here.

Yossi nagar from the israel antiquities authority

Investigates these newly discovered skeletons.

He excavates 33 of the graves.

I've found no children and no women.

Only males.

So I say, okay, that's weird.

Is this mass burial a military cemetery?

Are the soldiers of the sons of light

Fighting in the jewish revolt?

A clue may lie in the age of the men.

Most of the soldiers are from the same age group.

There are people around 18,

20, mostly maybe 30.

Yossi examines the skeletons, teeth,

And vertebrae to discover the age of the men

When they died.

The people that were buried here,

The average age of death is much higher

Than the regular cemetery or a regular village.

The age range of the men is between 20 and 50.

It's unlikely that they're rebel soldiers.

But is there another connection

Between the men buried here and the doomsday prophecy?

Yossi investigates if they were alive

When the scrolls were hidden in the first century a.D.

For me, it's great.

I'm an anthropologist I only look on the bones,

But the archaeologists want to know from which period it is

And it's hard to tell the date

When there are no artifacts inside.

You can only guess so we must take a bone sample

For carbon dating.

That's a good way of telling the age of samples.

Jewish respect for human remains

Means all the skeletons are reburied

Except for this one thigh bone.

Professor elisabetta boaretto of the weizmann institute

Of science extracts samples from the bones.

She uses radiocarbon technology

To date the human remains from qumran

For the first time.

To calculate the date,

She needs to extract a substance from the bone

That is once living tissue... collagen.

Collagen is a protein which is very important for the bones

To be elastic and a live tissue.

But the bones from qumran are very degraded.

There is almost none of the vital collagen.

Normally, you would give up about these bones,

And just say nothing to do.

Elisabetta has pioneered

A groundbreaking technique

To extract dissolved collagen.

Hopefully, we will get the date out of this.

The tiny samples of collagen

Will be reduced to raw carbon.

If this is successful,

It'll allow her to calculate a date for the bone.

Here we are. Wow. It's first century a.D.

That's really what... What we expected for qumran

But now we have an real data for this person

Because so you see, it covered the first century a.D.

- Mm-hmm. - Fantastic.

The test reveals that this bone

Is almost 2,000 years old.

The men date to the time the scrolls are written.

Finding these first century a.D. Data

Is super important.

They are buried next to the caves

Where the scrolls are discovered.

Are they the writers of the dead sea scrolls,

The authors of its doomsday prophecy?

Can discoveries here throw light on an apocalyptic battle

Between jewish rebels and the roman army

At herod's palace masada?

Are further clues revealed by a unique discovery

In the holiest city in judea...

Jerusalem.

Qumran on the dead sea, israel.

The site lies next to a mysterious all-male cemetery

Where the skeletons align with the midday sun.

We have no other site like qumran anywhere.

It is a unique archaeological site.

Archaeologist jodi magness

Is from the university of north carolina.

She searches qumran for evidence that this area

Might be the home of the sons of light,

The authors of the dead sea scrolls doomsday prophecy.

Based on the information that we have in the scrolls,

What we would expect to find at qumran is a settlement

That is not an ordinary town or a village,

But rather is a community center.

Jodi wants to make a connection between qumran

And the strict religious rules followed by the sons of light.

She starts with something used by all observant jews...

A mikvah or ritual bath.

Right behind me is a jewish ritual bath

Where jews would immerse

In order to ritually purify themselves in the water.

Sometimes you also see partitions

Running down the length of the steps

Which symbolically separate the impure from the pure meaning

That someone would go down one side of the steps,

Impure, immersed in the water,

And come back up on the other side, purified.

The many large ritual baths at qumran is evidence

That people living here follow the strictest religious rules.

The god of israel demanded that everyone in his presence

Be ritually pure,

And so even jesus and paul, for example,

Before entering the jerusalem temple,

Would've ritually immerse themselves in a pool like this.

We know from the scrolls

That the sons of light must ritually bathe twice a day.

Qumran has 10 ritual baths.

The scrolls say that the sons of light

Must always gather at meal times to eat together.

So this room is the largest room in the qumran settlement.

In a room adjacent to it,

A pantry of dishes with over a thousand

Dining dishes was found.

This large room also apparently

Was used as a communal dining room.

Qumran has all the facilities

Required by the strict religious laws of the sect.

And jodi has evidence qumran is where the sect wrote

Some of the dead sea scrolls.

It's been identified as a scriptorium or writing room.

At the second story level of this room,

Originally there was furniture and mixed in with the debris

Of this furniture were inkwells.

From the evidence found here,

Jodi has no doubt that qumran is the home

Of the sons of light,

The authors of the dead sea scrolls prophecy.

History also has another name for the sect.

We do have sources that tell us who this sect was.

All of these sources talk about a jewish sect

That lived on the northwest shore of the dead sea

In the area where qumran is located

Called the essenes.

Ancient sources tell the story of the essenes.

The essenes hail from jerusalem,

But so detest its religious rulers

That they abandoned the city.

They build a community near the dead sea

Where they can worship in their own way.

Obsessed with writing,

Copying, and collecting scripture,

They have someone reading the bible

Every minute of the day.

They write the rules of the community on scrolls

And store them alongside copies of their holy scriptures.

In the time of jesus,

We know that there were many different jewish groups,

Movements, and sects.

So the essenes were part of this mosaic

Of different jewish groups and movements.

The essenes, the sons of light,

Prepare for the apocalypse

Their dead sea scrolls prophecy foretells

As the romans stormed through judea

A brutally reasserting imperial control.

They quickly get to qumran.

In the middle of the revolt in the year 68 a.D.,

The site of qumran was destroyed.

The excavations revealed roman arrowheads.

Now, could it be that the scenes here at qumran

Thought that this was,

In fact, this apocalypse that they were awaiting?

Is this the essenes's doomsday?

Jodi searches caves near qumran for answers.

K4 is the one cave

That yielded the lion's share of the scrolls.

We have the remains of approximately 600

To 700 different scrolls.

Now, unlike in some of the other caves, the scrolls and k4

Were in a very poor state of preservation.

They had disintegrated

Into tens of thousands of little fragments.

The condition of the scrolls left here are clues

They are left in a hurry.

I believe that there can be little doubt

That at least some of the scrolls were deposited

In the cave for safekeeping

On the eve of the roman destruction of the settlement

In the year 68 a.D.

It's evidence of a last minute flight

From the roman destruction of qumran.

The essenes escape their doomsday.

Where do they go?

Just 20 miles west of qumran is jerusalem.

Clues to this mystery could lie here.

Jerusalem is the most holy city

In the roman province of judea.

It is also the original home of the essenes.

This is an area of jerusalem called mount zion.

Dr. Rafi lewis is from the ashkelon academic college.

He and a team from the university of north carolina

At charlotte excavate a site here.

They unearth buildings inhabited

At the time of the jewish revolt.

Excavating in jerusalem is fascinating.

It's a very complicated city today

And it was also a very complicated city in the past,

Specifically in the site where I'm excavating the over

2,800 years of occupation.

We have many different religions, many cultures,

Many different ideas.

Rafi's excavations reveal

Evidence of a wealthy home.

His dig unearthed some extraordinary rooms

That are sealed 2,000 years ago

At the time of the jewish revolt.

This is probably a blocked window that if we open it,

We'll be able to enter another room

Which belonged to this house.

Now, this is quite exciting

When we're thinking about the period

With many interesting events,

Including the hiding of the dead sea scrolls.

As the team unearths the ritual bathing pool

Of the house,

They find a possible link to the dead sea scrolls.

They extract four fragments from the rubble.

Parts of a carved limestone cup used in purification rituals.

Scratched into its surface

Are three types of mysterious scripts.

One of them is unique to the dead sea scrolls.

Could this cup belong to the essenes?

If so, what's it doing in a city they have long abandoned?

This is one of the most exciting finds

We've ever made in jerusalem.

It's a stone cup made from a very soft kind of limestone.

It was handmade.

Can actually still see the scraping or the chisel marks

In here like the knife has just made those lines.

Stone cups like this are used

For cleansing the hands not for drinking.

Ritual cleansing with these cups is common practice

During the time of the essenes.

But writing inscriptions on them is not.

Out of the 11 lines of inscription,

We can only make out one line.

This line is basically saying...

"I returned to the house of the lord."

Can this be an essenes inscription?

Is the cup evidence

That the essenes flee the destruction of qumran

And returned to their original home, jerusalem?

It might be holding an answer for us.

He comes back to the house of the lord.

He's very excited about it.

He picks up the first thing that comes into his hand,

And that's his stone cup.

He's writing the script,

"I return to the house of the lord."

It's an intriguing discovery.

There is a possibility that this was actually made

By someone who came back to jerusalem after being in qumran.

Nothing like this was ever found in jerusalem.

The cup suggests to rafi

That at least some essenes make it back to jerusalem...

...And escape their own prophecy of a coming apocalypse.

But are the essenes safe here or will jerusalem

Be the scene of the final apocalypse?

Can further clues be found in an underground tunnel

Deep beneath jerusalem?

A jewish religious sect,

The essenes, escaped the roman destruction of their home

Qumran by the dead sea

And flee to the holy city of jerusalem.

Their own doomsday scroll prophesizes a final battle

Between the forces of good and evil.

70 a.D.... After four years of the jewish revolt,

The roman army turns its sights on the rebel capital, jerusalem.

Under the streets of the city,

Dark secrets of jerusalem's past are being unearthed.

This is one of the world's most ambitious

Archeological projects.

We're beneath the streets of jerusalem

And we're excavating this window

In order to expose not the modern streets,

But the ancient streets

And the elements that were alongside it.

Joe uziel from the israel antiquities authority

And a team of engineers and archaeologists

Are burrowing beneath the city.

Each time we dig in about a meter

And this way we can follow

The layer across the entire area.

But peeling it away,

Sort of like a salami one meter at a time.

Joe and his team use advanced structural engineering

To allow an excavation many feet below the surface.

We have to make sure that we're not doing anything

That can damage

Or upset the existing framework above our heads.

And so, alongside us, a team of engineers follows

And makes sure that we're putting in the right supports,

Making sure that no structural damage occurs

To what's above our heads.

Today, modern jerusalem bustles

On top of layers of ancient occupation.

Between those layers are clues to the fate of the authors

Of the dead sea scrolls doomsday prophecy.

So we're walking now on the original pavement

Built here some 2,000 years ago.

The pavement, which was part of the street

That led up to the temple mound.

Joe's excavations have revealed

The main processional route to jerusalem's iconic temple.

Now I'm standing along the edge of the street,

Which separates the street from the buildings alongside

Of it here, if I walk just a little bit further down,

I have an opening into a building

Which stood along the side of the street

And would have had its entrance way onto the street.

When joe and his team excavate here,

They make shocking discoveries.

Joe believes these finds may explain the fate

Of any essenes that seek sanctuary in jerusalem

And reveal why this street is buried on a single day

In 70 a.D.

We know that the romans destroyed jerusalem

Down to its foundations.

They don't just burn down one point here, one point there.

They tear down its temple.

They knocked down part of the temple mount walls.

They tear down the bridges leading to the temple.

They rip apart the streets

And they burn the city to a ground.

Joe uncovers a destruction layer of burning

And smashed buildings.

So what we have in our excavations

Are basically the street, which is built in 30 a.D.

And then the days of the destruction

With the thick destruction layer and above that,

The collapse of the buildings

Which stood alongside the street and covered it over.

Within the destruction layer,

Joe discovers physical evidence of the deadly force

Unleashed by the romans.

This stone which I'm holding, which is part of a ballista,

Basically a very, very large sling stone,

Which would have been shot using maybe a catapult.

It's been broken.

So it would have been roughly the size of

Maybe a small basketball,

A stone so large could have easily done damage

To a building, let alone a person.

Is the destruction of jerusalem,

The cataclysm prophesied in the doomsday scroll?

The destruction of jerusalem

Is the bloodiest event of the jewish revolt.

20,000 roman soldiers surround the city

Which is packed with over a million people.

To conquer the city's mighty walls,

The romans release the full power

Of their awesome war machine.

Bit by bit, they conquered jerusalem.

They kill everyone in their path and ransack every building.

Many jews, including essenes take refuge in the temple.

But the romans simply burn it down.

Jerusalem becomes a death trap.

At this point in time,

The roman army is the most powerful army in the world.

They're saying you misbehaved and if you misbehave,

This is what happens if you're in the roman empire.

We wipe you away.

But more finds unearthed by the excavation

Indicate that for some of the jews trapped in jerusalem,

There is a chance of survival.

Hidden beneath the ancient street

Is a narrow sewer tunnel

That leads from the temple to the edge of the city.

In here, archaeologists find a golden bell

Like the ones high priest use at the temple

And further along a half shekels silver coin

That dates back to the time of the revolt

Evidence some rebels tried to escape

From the violence in the streets above.

But a roman sword found in the tunnel

May mean that some jews had to fight their way out.

These tunnels may be an escape route

For the authors of the dead sea scrolls prophecy.

Some of them succeeded escaping jerusalem

And some would have even fled towards the desert,

But others found their fate in these tunnels.

The roman destruction of jerusalem is total.

Today, little remains

Only a portion of the temple's western wall

Survives bearing witness to this day.

So what is the fate of the essenes,

As the authors of the scrolls doomsday prophecy?

Their headquarters, qumran, has been destroyed.

And their home city, jerusalem, razed to the ground.

The discovery of more scrolls at masada

Indicates that at least some essenes make it here

In a dramatic escape,

Bringing a few precious scrolls with them.

Does the discovery of dead sea scrolls

Here mean that the prophecy of a final battle

Between the forces of light and darkness comes true?

Not in jerusalem, but at herod's mountain fortress.

The dead sea scrolls hidden in desert caves

Since the time of the jewish revolt.

One of the scrolls contains a terrifying prophecy

Of an apocalyptic battle between the forces of light and darkness

That will mark the end times.

Where will that battle be fought?

Masada is once the mountaintop palace

Of king herod.

Historical accounts from the time of the roman war

Report that the palaces held by violent jewish extremists.

They are called the sicarii.

The sicarii or jewish assassins

Who take their name from the sica,

A deadly dagger they hide in their cloaks.

They're notorious for killing roman occupiers in public places

And vanishing into the crowd.

At the start of the jewish revolt,

Sicarii rebels capture herod's palace from the romans.

From their desert hideout, they can survive in safety

While the romans devastate the rest of judea.

Dr. Guy stiebel from tel aviv university

Investigates who else occupies this vast fortress

During the revolt against the romans.

I'm sure that the sicarii,

You were the most dominant group here at masada,

But they were not the only one.

Guy believes that ordinary jews from across judea

Are also seeking refuge in this mountaintop fortress.

Actually, I'm really thrilled because

We just pick out of the ground, a beautiful discovery.

What we have here is what we call a cabochon,

The gemstone, for me, this is a truly big story.

This tiny gemstone is only partially cut.

This means that the owner hasn't had time

To finish working on it.

Imagine the romans are out there.

You need to leave your home.

What do you take along?

The jewelry is something that is small enough to be carried

In your pocket or in your purse.

Guy wants to know if the essenes,

The authors of the dead sea scrolls prophecy,

Are also here at masada.

When archaeologists excavate this site,

They make an astonishing discovery.

Buried within the ruins of masada's perimeter wall,

Archaeologists discover fragments of ancient scrolls.

One of them is a copy of holy verse

Only ever seen in the dead sea scrolls

Called songs of the sabbath sacrifice.

A clue the essenes are also here at masada

Taking refuge in king herod's old palace...

...Seeking sanctuary in the one place in judea

Yet to fall to the roman reconquest.

Guy hunts for more traces of the essenes,

He measures a building that resembles

One of the communal structures at qumran

Where the dead sea scrolls are written.

The width of this hole is identical by the millimeter

To what we have at qumran,

The length is exactly half the size of what we have there.

For me, this led me to crack a riddle that

We had about the location of the essenes here

On top of masada.

Guy thinks that this structure proves some essenes

Are taking refuge at masada

And rebuilding their community here.

Is masada the location of the final battle

Between the forces of good and evil

Foretold in the essenes' doomsday prophecy?

His team excavates two buildings

Constructed into the wall of the fortress during the revolt.

It's a coin. It's what we call quarters or shekels.

From the time of the revolt on the floor.

Nice.

They unearth huge amounts of everyday artifacts

From the two buildings.

It's basically a one cup to drink made of glass.

And see, it fits perfectly.

Guy believes identifying

So many household finds proves

That the desperate rebels, including the essenes,

Are trying to live a normal life within the walls of masada,

Safe from the romans.

There are many, many, many artifacts.

And we want to not only to find them,

But to know exactly the location of them

Because then you can actually reconstruct

The activity within the house.

What we call household archaeology.

Masada is the last place in judea

That is still free and independent of roman rule.

If you want to find shelter from the romans,

This was a place to come.

Everyone was accepted on top of masada.

But how can 1,000 refugees

Survive on top of a mountain in the desert wilderness?

Archeological discoveries at masada suggest

That hundreds of jews have taken refuge here,

Fleeing the avenging roman legions.

They include the essenes,

The authors of the dead sea scrolls doomsday prophecy.

How long can they hold out here

On top of a mountain in the desert?

For answers, guy stiebel examines the innovations

Of the original builder of this mountain palace...

King herod the great.

100 years before the revolt,

Herod built a water supply into the mountain...

...Transforming what was once an arid desert mountain top...

...Into a lavish royal palace

Supplied by 10 million gallons of water

Enabling people to live in comfort in this remote spot.

It is one of the engineering marvels of the ancient world.

By the time of the revolt,

Herod has been dead for seven decades.

Is his incredible system still intact,

Allowing the refugees a chance to survive?

Guy searches the top of masada for clues.

He investigates a mysterious aerial photograph

Found in a dusty archive.

This is actually one of my favorite discoveries.

I'm holding here printouts.

A treasure map, if you wish.

Guy uses the photograph

To look for clues now hidden by restoration work at masada.

What we discovered here

Is an aerial photograph of masada.

It was taken, as is clearly written here,

Masada, 29th of December 1924

At 12:15,

A pilots from squadron 14 of the royal force

Took off from amman in jordan, flew to over masada

And recorded the site just before the excavation.

Looking carefully at the image,

Guy identifies two strange and mysterious dark patches

That no one had ever noticed before.

What are these bizarre shadows?

In the middle of this split, actually discover

The black holes that I was not aware of,

And this led us to excavate here in the last two years.

Thanks to this photograph,

Guy makes a completely new discovery.

Once we start to excavate,

We immediately hit a water cistern.

His excavation unearths

A water cistern right at the heart of masada.

Built by herod,

But still in use at the time of the revolt.

With a cistern actually unable,

The rebels on top of masada

To provides themself with drinking water.

There is enough water here

To last 1,000 people 10 years.

What is exciting here is the fact

That we have here story of survival of the people.

And you need water.

So a water system from the time of king herod the great

Was reused again by the rebels.

But the rebels also need to eat.

Today, almost nothing grows here.

Guy's team take soil samples from the palace for analysis.

Dr. Dafna langgut from tel aviv university

Examines them.

Dafna looks for evidence of agriculture at masada.

Pollen is the most durable organic substance in nature

And it can be preserved in sediments

For hundreds of thousands of years.

Ancient pollen in the soil

Will identify plant species.

So basically this grains are the fingerprints of plants.

For example,

Now I have identified a pollen grain of cypress tree.

These grains reveal that a huge number of plants

Are grown on top of the mountain.

We manage to identify pollen such as olives, grapes,

Sycamores, fig, pomegranate,

And cypress trees as well.

Dafna believes herod originally brings fertile soil

To the top of the mountain

Turning the arid landscape into a lush, productive garden.

Water is channeled from the cisterns onto the plateau

To grow grapes, date palms, and fruit trees.

And the harvest laid out to dry in the sun

To preserve it.

In the fort's store rooms,

There are reserves of water and stockpiles of grain

That can be used to bake bread

And dove cuts within the walls

Allow the refugees to breed birds for food

And harvest fertilizer for their crops.

Herod builds all this when it was his palace.

Just imagine that 70 years later,

This was a perfect location

For the rebels to find asylum in.

Discoveries reveal that rebels,

Refugees, and essenes at masada

Have all the water and food they need

Giving them a shot at survival.

They try to rebuild from the broken

Remains of their lives,

They're trying to recreate something new.

But herod's mountaintop fortress

Is not as safe as the rebels, refugees, and essenes hope.

Three years after the destruction of jerusalem,

Masada is the last rebel stronghold left standing.

But the romans will never cease until all of judea

Is brought to heel.

In the spring of 73 a.D.,

A roman legion descends on the mighty fortress.

Seeing the roman scouts appearing on the horizon

Would be terrifying.

No one on top of masada can be in any doubt

About what is coming.

This was not the fair game.

You don't mess with the romans.

We're talking about the most powerful army

In the ancient world.

Does the roman March on masada

Finally signal the arrival of the apocalypse long foretold

In the essenes dead sea scrolls doomsday prophecy?

The writers of the dead sea scrolls,

The essenes, hold out at masada.

With them, jewish rebels and hundreds of refugees

From the roman reconquest of judea.

The jews have held out here for three years.

Now 1,500 feet below, a vast roman army gathers.

But how did the romans lay siege

To a mountain fortress like masada?

Investigator guy stiebel and his team look for answers.

They use innovative drone mapping technology

To capture a complete 3d model of the roman siege.

Their new survey reveals the assault of masada

In unprecedented detail.

Once the romans decided to besiege masada

And to send to the desert

Between six to 8,000 soldiers, they mean business.

- Can you zoom in? - Yeah, yeah.

Guy and his team

Used the results of the drone survey

To examine the roman siege system.

It's a very, very steep.

So in a lot of places you cannot take picture of that.

So what we're doing is photogrammetry.

The drone captures hundreds of still images

From many different angles.

Afterwards we put it into the software

And it makes a 3d model.

The new technology allows the archeologist

To survey a virtual model of the whole site.

- We can see two stages here. - Indeed.

We have these walls and that wall

And you can see how steep it is.

Now you can see a difference. Yeah, yeah.

Having now is 3d modeling and all the data

Actually allow me to reconstruct the actual arena,

Where this very important siege actually took place.

Roman siege systems are built using

A standardized plan and construction technique,

But guy's survey reveals that at masada

They use a unique approach.

Stone blocks reveal the remains of a roman siege fort.

Behind its six foot perimeter wall,

The romans set up 100 tents to house their legions.

They assemble eight of these forts

And build a six-foot high siege wall to connect them.

12 tall towers along the wall

Allow legionnaires to keep watch 24/7.

The romans build a two-mile long wall

That wraps around the entire mountain,

Locking the rebels inside.

There was no way out for the rebels whatsoever.

The refuge of masada is now a prison.

From the wrong point of view,

There was like a drill set in advance

Of what we were going to do step by step.

This plan a, plan b, and plan c.

Each roman camp is highly organized

And operates like a miniature settlement.

At the heart of each camp

Lies the commander's tent and control center,

Military court, and guard station,

And shrines to worship the gods.

The regular legionnaires live in stonewalled tents,

Where up to eight men sleep

And eat together in a tight knit unit.

A legionaries daily duties include a three-hour guard watch

And rigorous drills and combat training.

But at masada, they spend most of their day

Building siege structures under the baking desert sun.

The rebels have the means

To survive the roman siege indefinitely.

But the romans are eager to end the stalemate quickly.

The essenes war scroll prophesizes a final battle

Between the sons of light and the sons of darkness.

A battle in which the sons of light will triumph.

Can the defenders hold out

And scatter the roman army to the winds

Fulfilling the prophecy

By finally defeating the ancient world's superpower.

The last stronghold of the jewish rebellion, masada.

In the desert sands below a huge roman army

Prepares its assault.

The doomsday prophecy comes to a climax.

The romans are experts in siege warfare.

But they have never attempted to storm

Anywhere like herod's palace.

The 8,000 roman soldiers

Besieging masada face a daunting task.

Steep, slippery inclines and sheer cliffs

Surround the jewish stronghold.

The rebels have an almost unlimited supply of water

From huge cisterns inside and on top of the mountain.

Around the citadel is a tall double wall

Over six feet thick with 30 towers guarding the approach.

Can the rebels survive the siege?

Or will the romans finally extinguish the jewish revolt?

They couldn't use the classical technique

Of just rolling a battering ram on top of a tower.

The romans must find a way to overcome

Almost 1,500 feet of sheer cliff.

Their answer to build this giant ramp.

Guy investigates why the romans build it here.

They decided to take advantage...

That we're standing on top of.

The romans, choose this spot

To cut by half the height they must build the ramp.

Even so, building an almost 500-foot ramp

In desert heat tests roman military expertise to the limit.

The romans must shift

Hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble

Before the ramp reaches the fortress.

Only then can they finally move their siege towers

Up to the defensive walls and begin an assault.

Guy believes the romans work surprisingly fast.

We do know from the american army, from second world war,

How many stones, what is a volume of stone,

A soldier, a fit soldier can move a day.

We can actually calculate the minimum,

Maximum time it would take the roman

To build the siege system.

Using these calculations,

Guy works out that the romans build the ramp

In less than nine weeks.

It's an astonishing achievement.

But how do they build it so quickly

In the fierce summer heat?

We're in the middle of the desert. It is hot.

Every day that you stay down here,

You need to provide yourself with more food, with more water.

The quicker you finish, your soldier will be happier,

You will lose less life.

So it is, indeed, imperative

For them to get up there as quickly as possible.

Guy investigates mysterious wooden fragments

Sticking out of the ramp.

He thinks they are a clue to its rapid construction.

What is pretty amazing is that

We have here a organic remains of branches and trees

That are laid here that they survived 2,000 years.

We can actually see the line here.

One after the other.

And if you go another meter up, you can see few mores.

By that, you're creating kind of shelves and boxes

That supported the rocks and the soil,

It was done quickly here,

Allowing the romans to storm masada.

The roman attack now centers on the defensive wall

Of the fortress at the very top of the giant ramp,

So the entire story

Actually focus into 25 meters,

Just the penetration points and bridge

To which the roman ramp actually led.

The romans prepare their final onslaught.

But the essenes's doomsday prophecy

Reveals the defenders of masada are ready to fight.

There is a public image of them,

A sort of an indian ashram in the middle of nowhere,

People that look for peace and quiet.

But when you actually read the war scroll,

You can see that the writer knew much about the art of war.

The war scroll dictates that essene priests

Should lead the sons of light into a giant battle

Against the sons of darkness.

It's a military plan that even details the music

That should herald the start of combat.

So certainly some of the essenes

Were actually very capable of carrying arms

And using them against the romans.

And high above the roman troops,

The rebels seemed to hold all the cards.

The rebels provided themselves with ammunition,

Rolling stones, big stones.

This stone barrage rains down

On roman siege engineers

At the foot of masada's massive walls.

How do the romans protect themselves

From the rebels on the ramparts above?

Guy's excavations may reveal the answer.

What you see here is a ballista ball

Made of limestone, a local limestone.

The weight is what we call two pounds, two roman pounds,

Roughly 600 grams.

And just imagine something like that

Flying from a distance of 400 meters.

This was meant to kill or harm human beings.

This ballista ball is evidence the roman artillery

Protects its engineers with volleys of covering fire.

Len morgan is an expert in building

And testing ancient roman weaponry.

He's investigating how the fearsome weapons are used

By the roman legions at masada.

Within a legion, you would have 60 bolt shooters

Or arrow shooters called catapultas.

You would also have 10 larger machines

Called the ballista.

Towards james. Lift it up.

Ballista and catapulta work in a similar way.

Len tests catapulta that fires iron tip bolts.

The main source of the power

Is the rope...

On either side of the front of the machine.

When it's twisted, that's the spring.

That's what projects the bolt from the bow string.

The bolts are deadly.

It uses a bolt like this iron headed,

Sharp pointed, designed to penetrate through shields,

Through body armor.

Right, bolt in.

Go.

Len uses a speed radar gun

To measure the velocity and killing power of the bolt.

What we want to know

Is the speed of the bolt through the air.

And ideally, we want to be pushing up to

About 100 miles an hour.

Len, I got 83.

Well, I'm sure we can do better than that.

- 91. - Well, that's better.

At the present moment,

We've achieved about 90 that I think can be improved on,

Especially if we do some more tensioning up on the machines.

Okay, bolt in.

It caused an awful lot of trauma,

A bit like a modern bullet.

It's going to take you out

Whether it's a killing blow or not.

Fully tensioned catapultas

Have a range of up to 400 yards

Easily enough to reach the ramparts of masada

From a safe distance while the ramp is constructed.

They'll be dropping down in various places within the walls

And possibly causing casualties for people

Moving around within the fortifications.

At masada, the romans used their artillery

To lay down suppressing fire.

How many missiles can a roman artillery crew fire per minute?

Right, the object to the exercise is get many bolts

Away as we can, operate as a team.

Start!

Drop any two.

Slide the forward, wind back.

30 seconds.

In they go, straight in.

One minute, 20.

All right, how we doing with time?

One minute, 30 seconds.

1 1/2 minutes to get full bolts away.

Really top trained crew,

Could be pushing out five, maybe six bolts in a minute.

Especially when you're under the stress of action,

When you've got enemy charging up on you

And you're gonna go flat out, hit it.

Each roman legion has up to 60 machines like this

And legionnaires are drilled to work to maximum efficiency.

You've got a volley of these

From a legionary machines of 60 machines.

You get them crashing around all around you

And people going down, screaming and shouting,

It's going to cause utter panic within the ranks.

The rebels defending masada

Face devastating firepower.

10 ballistas down the every minute there is

A stone in the air, catapultas shooting constantly.

So you can just imagine how difficult it was for the jews,

Even just to raise their head.

The entire ammunition of the romans

Were directed to unleash hell.

The rebels can do nothing to stop the romans

Erecting their siege towers

And slowly climbing the masada's walls.

Only the fortress ramparts now stand

Between the defenders of masada and death

At the hands of the romans.

For the jews, it was, in a way,

The ultimate clash, the sons of light

Against the son of darkness.

The essenes have escaped doomsday

At qumran and jerusalem.

Do they face it now at masada?

In the final battle

Between the sons of light and the sons of darkness.

2,000 years ago,

The writers of the dead sea scrolls

Hide their sacred texts in remote desert caves.

Known as the essenes,

They never return to retrieve them.

One of their scrolls, the war scroll,

Prophesizes is a doomsday battle

Between the forces of light and darkness.

Now the essenes are gathered at masada

As the romans prepare to launch their final attack.

Once they were faced with the romans,

It was very clear it was life or death.

There was no other option.

The romans now use their battering rams

And siege towers to crush the fortress walls.

And to remove a second barricade

The defenders have built up,

The romans set fire to it.

As the sun goes down, the romans pause their attack.

And it's a very symbolic sunset.

It was very clear that the end was near.

Guy turns to an account

By an ancient roman jewish historian, josephus.

There was one act only that you can still do and die

As pride man and that is to commit suicide.

10 rebels take the lives of the other 900 men,

Women, and children

Before one kills the final nine and sets fire to the fort.

And takes his own life.

When the romans enter masada, all the inhabitants are dead.

The apocalypse, the essenes predict in their scrolls

Becomes reality.

But it's the sons of darkness that win,

Not the sons of light.

Guy stiebel believes the sect perform one last significant act

Before they die.

His excavations at masada unearth a cave

Just like those at qumran.

The people of qumran used to place their scrolls in jars

And put it in caves.

In the fines lab,

Guy examines this remarkable piece of pottery

Found among the cave debris.

He identifies the fragment of a pot from its shape.

Actually, we are very thrilled.

We just discover a fragment of what we believe

Is a cylindrical jar of the type,

The ones that the essene,

People of qumran used to store their scroll in

And it was found in the cave just next to the dining hall.

He believes that this pot

Matches the design of the jars found in qumran

That contain the dead sea scrolls.

Is this evidence that the essenes is facing death,

Hide their last sacred scrolls in a cave at masada,

Just like they do at qumran?

For us to have that on top of masada in context in the cave

Is extremely, extremely significant.

After masada, the essenes vanish from history,

An end foretold in a remarkable prophecy

That survives 2,000 years in a desert cave.

The essenes that were here on top of masada died.

But their ideas clearly continued.

The essenes left us an enormous amount of information

That tells us about the world of jesus,

Judaism in this period, and ultimately the context

From which early christianity would emerge.

Without the discovery of these caves

And ancient scrolls,

The oldest bible in the world

Would remain lost in the judean desert

And the essenes would have been consigned to oblivion.

But today, the whole world can read the dead sea scrolls

And its terrifying prophecy of doomsday.