Original subtitles

[narrator] Ancient Iraq.

A land of myth and legend.

Home to some of the greatest cities of the Bible.

It's the cradle of civilization.

It is one of the most important areas in the world.

[narrator] Now after decades of war,

pioneering archaeologists are returning to Iraq.

Our cameras have unprecendented access,

as they unearth buried treasures,

as they unearth buried treasures,

and discover the real world of the Old Testament.

Western civilization only kept memories through the Bible.

I think it's very difficult

to pick apart the myths and the legends.

[narrator] This time,

archaeologists uncover two superpowers

of the ancient world.

Nineveh and Babylon.

[Osama] Nebuchadnezzar wanted to make Babylon

the greatest city on Earth.

[narrator] How did the epic struggle

[narrator] How did the epic struggle

between these two infamous cities

shape the ancient world?

And why do we know them from the Bible

as cities of sin?

Iraq. The cradle of civilization.

2,500 years ago,

two great cities and their empires

dominated this ancient land.

Babylon and its great rival, Nineveh.

Babylon and its great rival, Nineveh.

Babylon lies in central Iraq,

on the banks of the River Euphrates.

Nineveh sits much further north,

beneath the banks of the modern city of Mosul.

According to the Bible,

both cities were sinful places,

ruled by tyrants

who were brought down by the wrath of God.

But is there another side to these stories?

The Bible was a potent vehicle of memories

which were re-worked and traded as you wish,

but that was the only connection

until the first travellers

started telling people back in Europe what they saw.

They were reflecting on

these clearly massive ruins in front of your eyes.

And so myths were recreated.

[narrator] Nineveh is the oldest of the two cities.

It was founded by a people called the Assyrians.

It was founded by a people called the Assyrians.

The Bible says that Nineveh was a vast metropolis,

so large it took three days to walk across it.

The walls stretched for miles,

protecting grand palaces and temples.

So, how much of this is true?

Was Nineveh as big as the story describes?

Engineers rebuilt key sections

Engineers rebuilt key sections

of Nineveh's once mighty ramparts

in the 1970s,

based on what they would have looked like.

But today, little remains.

In 2014, Islamic State tried to erase

the ancient city's ruins from existence.

Khaireddine Nasser is the Head of Antiquities in Mosul.

He and his team are determined to rebuild what was lost,

and discover the true scale of this ancient city.

[speaking Arabic]

[narrator] Khaireddine investigates a huge structure

called the Shamash Gate.

It's one of the few sections of Nineveh's city walls

that survived the destruction.

[speaking Arabic]

[narrator] Our cameras have been granted rare access

to the Iraqi team,

as it explores this lost wonder.

Here at the Shamash Gate,

Islamic State looters dug this tunnel

underneath the ruins,

hunting for hidden treasures to sell on the black market.

Engineers must fill it in

to prevent the whole structure from collapsing.

[Khaireddine speaking Arabic]

[Khaireddine speaking Arabic]

[narrator] The archaeological repair work

is also an opportunity to discover more

about the size of the ancient city.

Nineveh was so big it needed many entrances.

On the other side of Mosul

lie the remains of the Mashki Gate.

Here, Fadhel Mohamad Khodr

and a team from the University of Pennsylvania

hope to uncover its foundations.

[speaking Arabic]

[narrator] This image taken before the destruction

shows how the reconstructed Mashki Gate used to look.

shows how the reconstructed Mashki Gate used to look.

It was a miniature fortress,

more than 80 feet high and 80 feet wide.

[Fadhel speaking Arabic]

[narrator] So, how large was this city?

Archaeologist, Nicolo Marchetti,

Archaeologist, Nicolo Marchetti,

from the University of Bologna,

belongs to an Iraqi-Italian team at Nineveh.

He uses drone technology

backed up by excavations on the ground

to piece together the city's layout.

What you see here is a representation

of the elevations.

We call it a digital elevation model.

[narrator] Ancient inscriptions reveal

how Nineveh had more than a dozen gates.

[Nicolo] The earlier texts speak of 13, 14 gates.

[Nicolo] The earlier texts speak of 13, 14 gates.

And then the number grows until 18.

But until now, only five of them

have been known archaeologically.

[narrator] Incredibly, archaeologists are still finding more.

We were very lucky in 2021 to identify a new gate here,

almost halfway between the river

and the Shamash Gate.

And we just started excavation here.

[narrator] The aerial survey reveals

how the city was surrounded by fortified walls

nearly 7.5 miles long.

nearly 7.5 miles long.

[Nicolo] The main defensive wall was 35 meters thick.

And minimum today,

it's preserved to a height of 15 meters.

But of course, it was much higher.

If you multiply this, the amount of labor

which was needed to make this wall

was simply mind-blowing.

It was an impossible technical feat.

[narrator] It's not hard to see why the biblical writers

believe that it took three days

to walk across Nineveh.

to walk across Nineveh.

The Assyrian capital was a mega-city.

One of the largest in the ancient world.

It covered an area of more than 2.5 square miles.

So, why is Nineveh so big?

A clue lies in the east of the city,

where Nicolo's team is helping

to rebuild another of the city's massive gates.

Here, investigators uncover an inscription,

Here, investigators uncover an inscription,

hidden from view for more than 2,500 years.

It reveals the name of the king who built it,

a mighty warrior called Sennacherib.

One of the most notorious rulers in the Old Testament.

[Nicolo] This is the inscription

by Sennacherib, and it says,

"Sennacherib, King of Assyria, King of the world,

erected the inner wall and the outer wall of Nineveh,

and built it as high as a mountain."

[narrator] In 705 BC,

[narrator] In 705 BC,

Sennacherib inherited the Assyrian throne.

His father had been killed in battle,

bringing shame to the royal family.

So Sennacherib decided

to move the imperial capital to Nineveh

and start again.

Nicolo's investigations reveal

how Sennacherib remodeled Nineveh's existing settlement

on an unprecedented scale.

He doubled its size

He doubled its size

and even diverted the Khawsar River

to run through it.

This is not encampments surrounded by walls,

empty, as so many people have surmised.

Our researchers have shown

that this was a real, thriving city.

Wherever we look, we find buildings.

And this is extraordinary.

[narrator] Archaelogists think that Nineveh

was home to more than 100,000 people.

Sennacherib's ambitions had no limits.

He decided to turn Nineveh

into one of the biggest cities on Earth.

Only Babylon was comparable in size and scale.

So, who was Nineveh's mighty king?

And did his city live up to his reputation in the Bible?

The Bible says that Nineveh was a great city,

but steeped in sin.

So God sent a prophet, Jonah,

to preach against the people of the city,

and save them from their evil ways.

At first, Jonah refused.

He tried to run away, and ended up at sea,

where he was swallowed by a whale.

But when the whale spat him out,

But when the whale spat him out,

he returned to Nineveh, and the people repented.

It's a famous tale,

but the Bible never says exactly why

the city needed saving.

So, what was Nineveh like to live in?

Tradition says that Jonah was buried on this hill in Nineveh.

Today, a mosque dedicated to him stands here.

It's now in ruins,

destroyed by the same militants

who tore down the city's ancient gates.

who tore down the city's ancient gates.

Intriguingly, investigators are uncovering the remains

of a vast palace beneath it.

It's one of several

built by the Assyrian kings in the city.

Fadhel Mohamad Khodr

investigates the most famous of Nineveh's royal residences,

Sennacherib's southwest palace.

[Fadhel speaking Arabic]

[narrator] The southwest palace

was the jewel in Sennacherib's crown.

Raised high on 160 layers of brick,

it had 80 rooms, adorned with sculptures,

and nearly two miles of decorated wall panels.

Sennacherib wanted this to be the greatest palace on Earth.

So, was the biblical story of Jonah

So, was the biblical story of Jonah

a rejection of Nineveh's extravagance?

Western archaeologists excavated this palace

in the 19th century,

driven by stories of the Bible and Jonah.

Today, little remains above ground.

But flying overhead

reveals the sheer magnificence of this legendary building.

[Fadhel speaking Arabic]

[Fadhel speaking Arabic]

[narrator] Fadhel thinks that Nineveh's palaces

were designed to make a powerful statement.

[Fadhel speaking Arabic]

[narrator] So, was Nineveh just a royal playground?

Nicolo Marchetti thinks that there was more

to Sennacherib's city than grand palaces.

He has uncovered the remains

of a mysterious tunnel beneath the city walls.

We opened an area here, and we were very surprised

to understand this was a water inlet, a canal.

to understand this was a water inlet, a canal.

The tunnel is 42 meters long.

But we are there eight meters below the surface.

[narrator] The canal was part of an immense network,

carrying water to Nineveh from the mountains.

[Nicolo] Nineveh was, at that time,

undergoing a drought.

A severe drought.

And this is why they worked so hard for bringing waters

from very distant fields.

This is an incredible feat by Sennacherib.

This is an incredible feat by Sennacherib.

[narrator] Nicolo has also unearthed evidence

of where Sennacherib found the expertise

to pull off these pioneering projects.

[Nicolo] We found a library of literary texts.

And the contents are incredibly interesting.

There is no administrative aspects here.

This is a library belonging to a learned individual.

[narrator] Nicolo and his team found fragments

of around 50 texts.

of around 50 texts.

But these are just the tip of the iceberg.

[Nicolo] At Nineveh there was another library,

which is the Library of Ashurbanipal,

which is an immense library,

featuring tens of thousands of tablets.

So this was a truly imperial capital,

and the intellectuals flocked here

from all around the empire.

[narrator] Nineveh was very different

to the decadent city of sin

portrayed in the story of Jonah.

So why did the biblical writers place his story here?

Did something happen later

Did something happen later

to spark the city's evil reputation?

A clue could lie in a stone carving

from inside one of Nineveh's palaces.

It shows an Assyrian king and his queen

relaxing in a garden,

while behind them, the head of an enemy hangs from a tree.

Did this paradise city have a dark side?

New discoveries reveal

how Sennacherib transformed Ninneveh

into a city of astonishing sophistication.

But did everyone embrace

the ancient Assyrian way of life?

The Assyrians, unlike the writers of the Bible,

believed in many Gods.

So could this be why Nineveh was seen as evil?

Our cameras have been granted rare access

to the Mosul Museum,

where Khaireddine Nassar and a team of specialists

where Khaireddine Nassar and a team of specialists

are trying to save the remains of Nineveh's ancient past.

Islamic State militants blew up this building

and smashed many of its greatest treasures.

[Khaireddine speaking Arabic]

[narrator] These feet belong to

the statue of a winged bull,

a popular Assyrian deity known as a Lamassu.

The creature's body represents speed and strength.

But each one has a human head,

But each one has a human head,

a symbol of wisdom and intelligence.

These celestial beings were hugely popular deities.

Archaeologists find Lamassu

at all the major Assyrian cities.

The Assyrians saw them as guardians.

[Khaireddine speaking Arabic]

[narrator] Archaeologists have discovered an astonishing 43

of these colossal statues at Nineveh alone.

So, where did these fantastic beasts come from?

A clue could lie with another, far older city.

Sebastian Rey is digging the ancient site of Girsu

Sebastian Rey is digging the ancient site of Girsu

in southern Iraq.

A familiar creature has been uncovered here.

[Sebastian] This was found at the site of Girsu.

This is a small stone sculpture

of a mythical supernatural being

with a human head and the body of a bull.

It's probably the earliest known representation

of these supernatural beasts known as Lamassus.

[narrator] This sculpture is more than 1,000 years older

than the ones from Nineveh.

[Sebastian] This is, in a way,

a sort of prototype of the Assyrian Lamassus,

those great beasts.

[narrator] Sebastian thinks it reveals

how the Assyrians saw the cultures

that came before them.

[Sebastian] This confirms this long tradition

[Sebastian] This confirms this long tradition

of myths, legends that were copied

time and time again

throughout the thousands years of the history of Mesopotamia.

[narrator] Mythical beasts were hugely popular

throughout the ancient world.

The Assyrians had the Lamassu.

The Egyptians had their own version, the Sphinx,

a fiercely protective lion with the head of a pharaoh.

Even the ancient Israelites, who believed in one god,

Even the ancient Israelites, who believed in one god,

had cherubim, heavenly creatures

who act as guardians and bearers of God's throne.

The Assyrian religion was similar

to most other cultures at the time.

So why does the Bible single out

their capital, Nineveh, for special condemnation?

A clue lies in the reliefs

that once adorned the walls of Sennacherib's palace.

They depict his forces attacking the city of Lachish,

in the Kingdom of Judah.

Soldiers advance behind siege engines,

while defenders hurl missiles at the attackers.

But against Sennacherib's war machine,

resistance was futile.

He destroyed Lachish, flayed alive its leaders,

and led its citizens into captivity.

The story of Jonah was written

well after all these events happened.

Sennacherib's conquest of Israel

made his capital the enemy

in the eyes of the biblical writers.

But the story is also a morality tale.

Jonah warned that the city would be destroyed.

A prediction that came true.

In 612 BC, Nineveh's great rival, Babylon,

raised it to the ground.

The Assyrian empire was broken,

and never recovered.

But Babylon has an even worse reputation in the Bible.

Why did the Biblical writers not celebrate the city

that had freed them from Assyrian rule?

In the 7th century BC,

the Babylonians destroyed Nineveh.

Their capital, Babylon,

now became the greatest city in the world.

But for the writers of both the Hebrew

and the Christian Bible, it was a den of wickedness.

According to the Old Testament,

Babylon's infamy stretched back to the dawn of time.

Babylon's infamy stretched back to the dawn of time.

Nimrod, who founded ancient Erech,

supposedly built this city, too.

His people set out to build the Tower of Babel,

a building so tall, its height offended God.

He punished the people of Babylon

by making them speak different languages,

so they could no longer work together,

and the tower was left unfinished.

It's a fabulous story.

So, was Babylon really the original sin city?

Today, Osama Hisham from the World Monuments Fund,

and archaeologist, Ammar al-Taee,

work to rebuild Babylon.

Despite the city's infamy,

investigators know surprisingly little

about its origins.

[Osama speaking English]

[Osama speaking English]

[narrator] Osama and Ammar are currently restoring

a temple dedicated to the goddess, Ninmakh.

Above ground, it's a modern reconstruction,

built during the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq's notorious dictator wanted to appropriate

Babylon's glorious past for his own ends.

But the reconstructions stand on ancient foundations.

[Ammar speaking English]

[narrator] Excavation trenches like this

reveal how Babylon's original buildings

were made from mud brick.

The team has had to figure out the Babylonian recipe

for mud brick to make their repairs more authentic.

[Ammar speaking]

[narrator] If the Tower of Babel did exist,

it would have been constructed from mud bricks like these.

Some think that the city's giant ziggurat

might have been the inspiration

for the biblical tower.

But there's a problem.

Today, it's a heap of mud brick.

And no one knows exactly how old it is.

And no one knows exactly how old it is.

The city's high water table makes it very difficult

for archaeologists to find Babylon's earliest buildings.

[Ammar speaking]

[narrator] So, archaeologists must hunt

for evidence elsewhere

to reconstruct the city's origins.

to reconstruct the city's origins.

According to Genesis,

Babylon was one of the world's first cities.

But today, most archaeologists

believe it was a relative latecomer.

Assyriologist, Stephanie Dalley,

thinks Babylon first rose to power around 1800 BC,

under a king called Hammurabi.

Hammurabi was a great builder,

and may even have constructed the original ziggurat.

and may even have constructed the original ziggurat.

He transformed Babylon

from a small, regional city into a huge metropolis.

[Stephanie] Hammurabi was a great king.

He dug wonderful canals

to facilitate transport and so on.

And by building the canals, he made it possible

to irrigate a larger expanse of agriculture.

[narrator] This influential ruler

also produced one of the earliest

also produced one of the earliest

lists of laws ever discovered.

Known as the Code of Hammurabi,

its principal of reciprocal justice

could even have influenced

the Bible's "eye for an eye" rule.

Archaeologists have found copies of the Code

across the Middle East.

It's impossible to prove

exactly when Babylon was founded.

But its long and glorious past

But its long and glorious past

could explain why the writers of the Bible

saw it as one of the world's first cities.

Stephanie thinks that Babylon's fame

also drew criticism,

which may explain the origins of the Tower of Babel story.

[Stephanie] It sounds as if they're mocking the fact

that people are babbling away

and can't understand each other.

And that, to me, tells how cosmopolitan Babylon was.

And that, to me, tells how cosmopolitan Babylon was.

[narrator] Other myths from the time suggest that

the biblical authors may have intended their story

as a slight on a city so proud of its vast architecture.

[Stephanie] We've now found a text

which seems to be making fun of the people

who build towers out of mud bricks,

so they fall down all the time.

[laughs] And of course, the Tower of Babel,

the ziggurat in Babylon, did fall down,

irreparably in the end.

irreparably in the end.

[narrator] So, why did the biblical authors

focus so much on Babylon's flaws,

if everyone else admired this great city?

The answer lies with its most notorious king,

Nebuchadnezzar II.

In 586 BC, Babylonian armies conquered Jerusalem,

and deported its population.

His campaign would earn Babylon

its terrible reputation.

Who was Nebuchadnezzar II?

And how much about his reign is true?

In 586 BC,

the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II,

conquered the city of Jerusalem.

The Bible says he ransacked the city's temple,

and exiled its people to Babylon.

2,500 years ago,

Babylon was an awe-inspiring sight.

The exiled Judeans would have entered the inner city

The exiled Judeans would have entered the inner city

along a huge avenue called the Processional Way,

that led to its main entrance, the Ishtar Gate.

Babylonian engineers built this gate

from baked brick instead of mud brick,

and covered it in images of animals

to amaze those who came through.

For the exiled Judeans,

it was the entrance to a prison like no other.

What can this mighty structure tell us

about the man who brought them here?

Was Nebuchadnezzar the megalomaniac

of biblical fame?

Our cameras have been granted special access

to Osama Hisham and his team,

as they rebuild the Ishtar Gate.

[Osama speaking]

[narrator] Over the centuries,

this colossal monument has been plagued

by Babylon's destructive water problem.

[Osama speaking]

[narrator] To safeguard the gate,

the team must ensure that water does not become trapped

inside the brick walls.

[Osama speaking]

[narrator] The reconstruction work

gives Osama an insight

into the mind of the king who commissioned it.

[Osama speaking]

[narrator] But Nebuchadnezzar wanted a city

that was beautiful as well as big.

In the 1900s, German archaeologists

discovered thousands of broken glazed bricks

that used to cover the gate.

They shipped them to Berlin,

where specialists painstakingly reconstructed

Nebuchadnezzar's crowning achievement

in its original glory.

in its original glory.

This is the awesome sight

that would have greeted the Hebrew exiles

as they began a new life,

thousands of miles from their home in Jerusalem.

Museum curator, Helen Gries,

protects this ancient mega-structure.

[speaking English]

[narrator] Today, Helen and her team

undertake crucial work on the Processional Way.

undertake crucial work on the Processional Way.

[Helen speaking]

[narrator] They begin by taking

high-resolution photographs of each individual brick.

By comparing them to images taken in previous years,

By comparing them to images taken in previous years,

they can check for signs of damage

to the fragile glazes.

Helen focuses on one of the ornate lotus flowers

that line the walls.

[Helen speaking]

[narrator] Helen's forensic analysis of the bricks

also reveals how Nebuchadnezzar's artists

pioneered a new technique

to give the tiles their bright blue color.

[narrator] But Helen thinks

these ground-breaking monuments also reveal

how Nebuchadnezzar wanted to be seen.

Assyrian palaces are covered

with images of war and conquest.

But these Babylonian walls are alive with mythical beasts.

The lion represents Ishtar, the goddess of love and war.

The bull is the symbol of the weather god, Adad.

And the white dragon is the avatar of Marduk,

Chief God of Babylon.

There are more than 575 animals on these walls.

Nebuchadnezzar wanted to show himself

as a devoted follower of the gods.

as a devoted follower of the gods.

But to the biblical exiles,

the King must have seemed anything but pious.

[Helen speaking]

[narrator] Nebuchadnezzar was far from the liberator

of the ancient world.

of the ancient world.

He used the loot

from conquered cities like Jerusalem

to make Babylon great again.

So, what was life like for the exiles

inside this monumental prison?

And how did Babylon really fall?

The bible describes Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar II

as the ultimate city of sin.

It tells us that he conquered the population of Judah

and exiled them to Babylon.

According to the Book of Daniel,

the exiles endured a succession

of terrible hardships in their new home.

Including when one king threw the prophet Daniel himself

into a lion's den.

[lion roars]

Ultimately, God brought divine retribution

to the Babylonians.

Nebuchadnezzar descended into madness.

And a new people, the Persians, conquered the city.

Many historians believe that the earlier parts of the Bible

were written in Babylon by exiled priests.

For them, exile was a traumatic experience,

which explains the Bible's

negative portrayal of the city.

Did all Judeans see Babylon that way?

Helen Gries finds a clue among the thousands

of cuneiform fragments found at Babylon.

of cuneiform fragments found at Babylon.

This tablet is a rare glimpse

into what life in exile was like.

[narrator] Jehoiachin was among the thousands

of Judean exiles sent to Babylon.

Archaeologists discovered this reference to him

in Nebuchadnezzar's royal archive.

[Helen speaking]

[narrator] Nebuchadnezzar granted Jehoiachin

an allowance of sesame oil from the royal storehouses.

[Helen speaking]

[narrator] As a former king,

Jehoiachin enjoyed special treatment.

But lower-ranking Judeans also took to life in Babylon.

When the King of Persia, Cyrus the Great,

conquered the city and allowed the exiles

to return home to Jerusalem, many decided to stay.

[Helen speaking]

[Helen speaking]

[narrator] Hundreds of years after Babylon fell,

the Book of Daniel emerged.

It was an apocalypse story,

warning that God would punish those who disobeyed him,

just as he had done

to the sinful King Nebuchadnezzar.

The fierce rivalry between Babylon and Nineveh

shaped the ancient world.

The writers of the Bible

saw the rise and fall of these cities

as cautionary tales.

A sign of what happened to those

who went against the will of God.

[Nicolo] The historical reality of the Assyrian East

was quickly forgotten.

Western civilization only kept memories through the Bible.

The interplay of ancient and modern myths

in Mesopotamia

is like a constant feature of the land.

[narrator] But now, archaeologists are uncovering

the true achievements of these remarkable civilizations,

rebuilding lost wonders,

and resurrecting rich and ancient cultures.

Their investigations will take many years,

Their investigations will take many years,

as Iraq continues to recover

from decades of war and terrorism.

But the Babylonians and the Assyrians of Nineveh

left us an incredible legacy.

They preserved the stories and the culture

of the first city builders, the ancient Sumerians,

whose echoes can still be heard

in three of the world's great religions.

The truth behind the lost cities of the Bible

is the story of the dawn of civilization.