Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

- Mysteries can be buried anywhere,

under the earth,

[volcano erupting]

beneath the sea,

or even right under our own feet.

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find can change history.

Tonight, Sacred Finds.

From ancient books that might be missing parts of the Bible.

- As he begins to read, he sees these words.

These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke.

- To a strange golden treasure

meant to stop the apocalypse.

- This is the end of the world.

The gods must be angry, so an offering has to be made.

- [Danny] To a buried tower with a dark history.

- The archaeologists discover around 600 more skulls,

at one point in time it held over 60,000.

- Join us now because nothing stays hidden forever.

[mysterious music]

In 1945, 2 brothers are out in the countryside

digging for fertilizer to use on their farm.

As they work, one brother hits something unusual.

- You've got two brothers, Mohammed and Abu,

and they're digging in the ground with their pickaxes.

Now Abu, as he's digging with his pickax,

he hits the ground and he hits something hard.

[pickax clanking]

So Mohammed steps in to see what it is he discovered.

They pull a red clay jar out of the ground

and it's about three feet high and it's sealed.

- This jar fires Mohammed's imagination.

I mean, there could be a fortune inside this jar.

Diamonds, rubies, gold, who knows what could be inside?

And so he shatters the jar,

[clay jar breaking]

but no riches come out.

- [Narrator] All they find

are a dozen leather- bound papyrus books.

- This is kind of a letdown.

First it's not treasure, and second,

some other farmers digging nearby

tell them that they're written in Coptic,

the language of Egyptian Christians.

- Mohammed is Muslim and he is not literate

and he has no particular use for these old books.

- Mohammed thinks maybe he can sell them

and make a few bucks.

- The brothers load up their books along with the fertilizer

and take them home, dumping them in a pile of straw

next to their outdoor oven.

- [Narrator] But before they can sell them,

they have more serious business to deal with.

- A few months earlier, the brother's father

was killed by a member of a rival clan

and they want revenge.

- Not long after the discovery,

the brothers track their father's killer down

and when they do, they murder him.

[tense music] [cracking and slashing]

- They chop off the man's arms and legs

with the very pickaxes they used to dig up the fertilizer.

And in the ultimate act of blood revenge,

they cut out his heart and they eat it.

The brothers know that they're obvious suspects

and that the authorities

are going to come and search their house,

so they hide the pickaxes and the books for safekeeping.

- [Narrator] The brothers are soon picked up

by the police for questioning.

- Meanwhile, the rest of the family begins trading the books

to local neighbors for things like cigarettes and fruit.

- Most of these books end up on the Cairo black market

while dealers try to kind of flip them for profit.

- [Narrator] When the Egyptian government

gets wind of the books,

they track down and seize most of them.

- Researchers examine the manuscripts

and realized that they contained some letters

that were written by the apostles.

We're talking guys like James, John and Peter

that date back to the second century AD.

- [Narrator] But at least one book escapes authorities

and ends up in the hands of a religious scholar

named Gilles Quispel.

- As he begins to read from this text,

he becomes so excited because he sees these words,

these are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke.

[mysterious music]

- Quispel's head nearly explodes.

He realizes that he's reading from a copy

of the Gospel of Thomas.

This is not one of the New Testament gospels like Matthew,

Mark, Luke, and John, it was left out of the canon

because this is one of the gnostic gospels.

- The gnostics were group of early Christians

who didn't believe in some of the tenets

that we associate today with Christianity,

such as the resurrection of Jesus.

- [Narrator] And the Gospel of Thomas

has even more contrary ideas.

- In the different gospels in the New Testament,

you can read that the Kingdom of God is this place

that you'll get to eventually.

In the Gospel of Thomas,

the Kingdom of God, Jesus says, is within you.

So it's a little bit more of a kind of a process

of self-discovery.

- And in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus ridicules people

who think that the Kingdom of Heaven is an actual place.

- [Narrator] Eventually, Quispel and other experts

begin analyzing several more of the texts.

- Overall, these paint a very different picture

of who Jesus was.

In one text, He even professes his love for Mary Magdalene.

- [Narrator] So how do these books end up buried in Egypt?

- When the Roman emperor Constantine

converts to Christianity in 312 AD,

the Church becomes incredibly powerful.

- Church officials hunt down anyone and anything

they consider to be blasphemous and heretical.

- [Narrator] Church leaders destroy any books

that don't fit their version of the New Testament,

but luckily, some of these texts survive.

- Some experts think that it was a monk

from a local monastery who put these texts together,

tucking it away in a jar

and that Mohammed smashed open 1,600 years later.

- [Narrator] Today, most of the books the two brothers found

are in a museum in Cairo.

- But in a final twist of fate, Mohammed later admits

that his mother used many of the pages they found

to kindle the family fire.

[flames roaring]

These priceless pages escape the flames for 1,600 years

only to go up in smoke on a cold December night.

- [Danny] Finding a lost sacred text is one thing,

but imagine if your discovery falls into the wrong hands.

- In Northern Egypt, in the late 1970s,

a farmer who also deals in small-time antiquities

checks out a cave outside the town of Beni Mazar.

- He hears about this cave from some locals

and he decides to go looking for jewels or other treasures

because the caves here were used as tombs for centuries

and people are often buried with valuable objects.

- In one particular tomb, is a large stone box.

He pries the lid off it

and all he finds inside is an old book.

It's really in very bad shape, it's crumbling,

but he thinks maybe if he takes it,

he could get something for it.

- [Narrator] The trader shows the book

to a Cairo antiques dealer known simply as Hanna.

- The local trader isn't asking much,

maybe just a few thousand dollars,

so Hanna scoops it up, hoping for a big sale.

- In 1980, Hanna shows the book to a prospective buyer

and then the very next day,

his apartment is robbed

[glass smashing]

and the book is gone.

Something's weird,

Hanna realizes two things at this point,

the book is valuable enough to be stolen

and it's caused him a lot of trouble already.

- [Narrator] Two years later,

Hanna tracks down that prospective buyer

and gets the stolen book back.

- He wants to sell it,

but this robbery has made him very paranoid.

- [Narrator] Eventually, Hanna finds another

potential buyer,

but then he reveals his asking price.

- Hanna wants $3 million for this book,

so there's no deal.

Over the years, Hanna tries

to find other buyers, always unsuccessfully,

so he decides the best thing to do

would be to stash it in a safety deposit box.

- The documents sit there,

slowly disintegrating in the humidity

for the next 16 years.

- [Narrator] Finally, in April of 2000, Hanna finds a buyer.

- She is a Swiss antiquities dealer

by the name of Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos,

but she's not willing to pay that much money for it.

She offers him $300,000,

which is only 10% of his original asking price,

and he accepts.

- [Narrator] Nussberger-Tchacos

brings the text to experts at Yale University

to figure out what the book is once and for all.

- They make an astounding discovery.

This book is another lost gospel

and it's one they've been trying to find for centuries,

the Gospel of Judas.

- It's a copy of a text

believed to have been originally written

in the second century AD.

Until now, scholars had known that this text had existed,

but they had never seen a copy of it for themselves.

- It's one of the greatest biblical finds in history

because it tells a very different story

of Jesus and his relationship with Judas.

- Judas is the disciple in the New Testament

who ultimately betrays Jesus,

he gives him up which leads to Jesus' arrest

and ultimately, to his crucifixion.

- Here, Judas is not a traitor,

he's kind of a hero or an anti-hero,

he's the chosen disciple.

Jesus supposedly reveals secrets about God,

creation and the cosmos only to Judas.

- And the biggest bombshell of all

is that Jesus asks Judas to betray him

as part of the greater plan to save humankind.

This completely flips the traditional story

that so many of us have heard.

- Many scholars think it was suppressed

by the early church who tried to destroy every copy.

- But this one survived, barely.

In the two thousands, many of the pages were separated

and either sold to private collectors

or turned over to museums.

- But if they hadn't been rescued from a greedy dealer,

they might have all rotted away.

- There's beginner's luck,

then there's the luck our next guy has

when he discovers a bunch of gold objects

the very first time he uses a metal detector.

- So it's 2020, and this guy in Denmark

by the name of Ole Ginnerup Schytz,

decides he needs a new hobby.

[mysterious music]

- His father-in-law recently bought him a metal detector

and he figures he could hunt around for stuff outside.

- And Schytz takes his new toy out for a spin,

just wants to test it out,

takes it over to his friend's property,

just to, see what this thing is capable of.

Eventually, he gets a hit on the metal detector.

Okay, found something.

- And he digs in the soil

and he pulls up what seems to be the lid

to a can of herring, but this is no canned fish.

- Schytz has struck gold, literally.

- Soon, he brings up more gold pieces,

22 separate items in all.

These aren't just coins,

but they're pendants the size of saucers

inscribed with images and runes,

which are basically ancient Germanic symbols and letters.

- Schytz snaps some pictures and sends them to Mads Ravn,

the head researcher at a local museum.

- Ravn can't believe his eyes

and he writes back to Schytz, you know what?

Put the metal detector away, that's it.

You've won, you've peaked.

It's not gonna get any better than this.

- It turns out these items are from the sixth century AD

and this mix of treasures

is unlike anything the world has ever seen.

- It includes the largest gold pendant ever found,

coins depicting Roman emperors minted in Greece.

What's interesting, a number of the pendants

were folded in half,

showing that they were purposely bent.

- Ravn and his research team know

that this is a sign of sacrifice.

- [Narrator] But what was it for?

- They realize that this buried treasure

coincides with a very bad time in Scandinavia.

[volcano erupting]

- Back in 536 AD, a volcano erupts in Iceland

spewing such large amounts of ash

that it blocks out the sun.

Temperatures drop for decades, crops fail

and there is unsurprisingly,

a widespread famine in the region.

- Those who don't die of hunger

get slammed by a wave of plague and to many,

they feel that this is it, this is the end of the world.

The gods must be angry about something,

so an offering has to be made.

- [Narrator] An important find in the haul

reveals which gods they're trying to please.

- It depicts a man on horseback

with long braided hair

flowing out from underneath his crown.

He stares into the eyes of a raven, runes surround them.

Across the top,

they spell out the words for I invite and beer.

- There's also a reference inscribed on the bottom to

"The High One," that is usually in reference to Odin,

the king of the Norse gods.

- If so, this could be the oldest reference

to Odin ever found and means that

he was worshiped centuries before previously thought.

- When we think of the Norse gods, we think of the Vikings,

but this is a few hundred years

before the Viking period starts.

- [Narrator] That means this discovery isn't just valuable,

it also rewrites the history books.

- Experts say that the treasure shows the roots

of beliefs that were later adopted by the Vikings.

So this treasure haul isn't just a lot of money

and an amazing find, but it also shows us

what could be the very beginnings of an entire religion

and an entire culture.

- Now we turn to Israel

for a discovery that takes place at the site of Armageddon.

- The word Armageddon

comes from the Hebrew name, Har Meggido

or Mount Megiddo.

- This place actually exists,

it's not a mountain, but it's a mound that's been created

by many generations of people

living and rebuilding in the same place.

- Megiddo has drawn tourists for ages

who want to come and see the site that's mentioned

in the New Testament,

but little do these tourists know

that only a few hundred yards away,

lies one of the most dangerous

maximum security prisons in the world.

- Over the years, Megiddo Prison has housed inmates

that Israel considers some of the gravest threats

to its national security,

including some defendants accused of terrorism.

- [Narrator] To strengthen its defenses,

in 2005, the prison is getting a much needed upgrade.

- An inmate named Ramil Razilo

is removing rubble to prepare for some construction

when his shovel strikes something solid.

He scrapes back some dirt and discovers a tile inlay.

He brushes a little more soil aside

and soon discovers that this is actually just the edge

of an elaborate mosaic.

- A team of archaeologists is called in

and with the help of the prisoners,

they uncover the mosaic

and then more and more.

It's a whole complex

with beautiful tile floors inscribed in ancient Greek.

- The mosaic has Christian inscriptions inlaid into it

and we know from those

that actually what was discovered is a Christian church

and it dates back to around 230 AD.

- [Narrator] That means,

this is the earliest Christian church ever found.

- It's shocking because in 230 AD,

Christianity is still an illegal religion

in the Roman Empire.

It's persecuted, which means that in many cases,

its worship has to be done in secret.

- It's still another a hundred years

before the Roman Emperor Constantine

legalizes Christianity across the empire

and in fact becomes a Christian himself.

- But as archaeologists discover more of the site,

they learn that this place of worship wasn't hidden at all.

- In fact, it's located right up against

a Roman military barracks site

and in fact, the inscription says that this site

was built thanks to the donations of a Roman centurion.

- It seems Christians here in the Holy Land were accepted

much earlier than previously thought.

- [Narrator] It's an incredible discovery,

but there's something even more surprising.

- An inscription in this mosaic

says that this place is a memorial to God Jesus Christ.

- Nowhere else is Jesus described as God

this early in history outside of the Bible.

Not just prophet and teacher, but God.

For centuries, some historians argue

that Jesus never claimed to be God

and wasn't understood to be God until much later.

- But what this discovery proves is that very early on,

some Christians were thinking of Jesus as divine.

- Eventually the Megiddo prison is moved

so that the mosaic can be left in place and not disturbed.

There's been some talk of transferring it to a museum,

but so far, it's still there near Mount Megiddo

where it has been for 1,800 years.

- There are a lot of things we hope for on a vacation,

R&R, maybe a few really good meals,

but I'm guessing one of the things we don't expect

is finding treasure on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

[water splashing and bubbling]

- In October, 2021, Shlomi Katsin

who lives along the coast is out for a weekend dive.

He's not looking for anything in particular,

he just enjoys being in the water to relax.

- [Narrator] 500 feet from shore,

he spots something strange on the sea floor.

- It looks sort of like a rock,

but it's shaped like a cross.

- Whatever this thing is, it's encrusted with barnacles,

seashells and other marine life

and it seems like it's been there for ages.

- Katsin brushes some sand away

and realizes it's much longer than he thought,

at least four feet.

Then he goes to lift it, it's very heavy.

- He realizes that this isn't a cross at all,

it's a sword.

- Katsin turns it over to the Israel Antiquities Authority

and he learns that it's about 900 years old.

- [Narrator] It turns out this sword

was used in the Crusades.

- It is extremely rare

to find a sword from these holy wars.

Most of them were melted down to reuse the metal.

- The Israeli authorities think it was buried

deep in the sand but was jarred loose by a storm

about four months earlier.

- [Narrator] Authorities begin to study the sword

more closely, but as they remove the barnacles,

the blade shatters.

- Instead, they x-ray the sword.

They determine that it's made of iron

and because the blade is straight and not curved,

they can also tell that it likely belonged

to a Christian soldier, not a Muslim one.

- It's possible the sword was just dropped overboard,

but because of the x-rays,

they can see that the sword is slightly bent

and the handle's been whacked out of alignment.

So perhaps, this was lost in battle.

- Some historians think that this sword could have been used

as part of King Richard the Lionheart's campaign

at the end of the 1100s as he battled along

the coast of what is now Israel in the Third Crusade.

[waves roaring]

- [Narrator] Whatever its journey,

the sword ended up in the perfect location.

- According to experts,

the very specific conditions of these waters

helped preserve the sword.

Not only did the barnacles

and other growth provide a protective layer,

but the fact that the waters in this area stay

roughly the same temperature year round also helped save it.

- And with so many people scuba diving

in this particular area,

who knows what other amazing thing will be discovered next?

- Imagine finding an amazing treasure

while you are playing with school friends.

That's just what happened to some kids in Cambodia in 2012.

- In August of 2012, a bunch of kids

are bathing in a newly dug pond

about 50 miles north of the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.

- This pond was built to help people cool down

from the tropical temperatures of Southeast Asia.

- The children begin digging on the muddy banks

and one of them hits a piece of stone.

- But they quickly discover it's actually a small statue.

The other kids begin digging,

they find statues, all Buddhist figures about a foot tall,

six of them in all.

- Some of these statues are more than a thousand years old.

The oldest of them date back to the ninth century.

- Cambodians believe religious statues

are sacred deities or gods.

They even believe these relics

hold the souls of their ancestors.

So this find is incredibly meaningful to the community.

- Cambodia has a large series of archaeological sites

and religious artifacts thanks to its history

as both a Buddhist and Hindu land.

- [Narrator] Unfortunately, not many relics stay local.

- Religious artifacts can fetch

thousands of dollars from foreigners in the black market.

And in a country like Cambodia

where the average monthly salary is barely $200,

selling treasures like these

can feed a family for several months,

- But rather than selling them,

these children and their families

decide to donate the artifacts to a local Cambodian museum.

They choose to preserve and share their history,

and that's something that's truly sacred.

- Discovering a long lost relic can be really exciting,

it can also reveal something disturbing.

- One morning in 1978,

electrical workers are digging in an area of Mexico City

to install an underground power transformer,

but work comes to a stop

when they hit what appears to be a boulder.

- They start digging around this thing

and they realize very quickly that this is no ordinary rock.

- [Narrator] It's a 10 foot circular stone

with very detailed carvings.

- It depicts a female figure.

However, scattered around it are body parts

all cut into pieces.

Archaeologists are called in

and they immediately identify the figure as an Aztec god.

- The image is actually the ancient Aztec female deity

known as Coyolxuhqui

- And it's believed the stone once stood at the entrance

to the Aztecs' primary temple, the Templo Mayor.

However, it's been missing for centuries.

- [Narrator] From the early 1300s,

the Aztecs were a powerful empire for 200 years,

centered in modern-day Mexico.

This stone gives us more insight into their culture.

- In the Aztec belief,

this deity shown on the front of this temple,

dismembered and disfigured is meant to serve as a warning

for anybody that would try to enter the temple.

Basically, if you mess with us,

this is what's going to happen to you.

- And they're not joking around because the Aztecs

regularly and persistently

sacrificed people on the pyramid

which she sits at the base of.

- [Narrator] These human sacrifices were huge spectacles

with large crowds.

- According to firsthand accounts in the 1500s,

many of the victims are decapitated.

- Other times, they were stabbed

and had their hearts removed from their body.

The heart would be held up

in front of the crowd while it was still beating

and the lifeless body

would be tossed down the temple stairs.

At one point, it's even said the Aztecs sacrificed

4,000 of their enemies at the same time.

[dark tense music]

- [Narrator] But in 1519, the Spanish arrive

and weaken the Aztecs with a one-two punch

of guns and disease.

- The Spanish then proceed to

wipe out the Aztec native religion

and force Catholicism upon the populace.

- [Narrator] As the Aztec religion is erased,

a majority of its most important artifacts and relics

are lost or destroyed.

But the discovery of this circular stone leads researchers

to take a closer look at the surrounding area

where they make an even more disturbing find in 2015.

- A building is being renovated

very close to where they found the stone.

Workers dig under the structure

when they find a chamber made of volcanic rock walls

with a flagstone floor.

- And when they look inside the chamber,

what they see is just chilling.

It's a wall made up entirely of human skulls.

[mysterious music]

- Over the next two years, archaeologists discover

that this wall of skulls is actually a giant skull tower

called a Tzompantli.

Spanish accounts say that the Aztecs

built a variety of these structures,

utilizing the skulls of their enemies.

- These skull racks were used primarily for intimidation.

Just imagine what it felt like

to look at a huge wall of human skulls.

- [Narrator] The legend of this skull tower

goes back centuries,

but this discovery makes the myth very real.

- Over the next couple years,

the archaeologists continue to excavate

and discover around 600 more skulls,

but they do believe that at one point in time,

it held over 60,000.

- [Narrator] Two years later,

there's another shocking twist.

- Some of these skulls are actually the skulls

of women and children.

Before this discovery,

most historians believe the skull racks

only displayed the skulls of enemy warriors.

- But this discovery has the experts

rethinking the purpose of these towers.

Were women and children serving as warriors?

Were they sacrificed as enemy populations

or could it have been something else?

- Historians are working to put answers together,

but it seems likely that there are many more

sacred secrets of the Aztecs hiding under Mexico City.

- Let's say you're a chemist on vacation in Italy.

You go for a scuba dive

and see something truly alarming on the sea floor.

That's exactly what happened to one guy in August of 1972.

- Stefano Mariottini is vacationing in the town of Riace

off the coast of the Ionian Sea.

[water bubbling]

- He's diving about 600 feet from shore

when suddenly, 20 feet down,

he sees something that stops his heart cold,

an arm sticking out of the bottom of the ocean.

- He works up the courage to swim down

and immediately he realizes, oh, I didn't find a body,

what this actually is is a life-size bronze statue.

- And ancient bronze statues are extremely hard to come by

because generally speaking,

they were often melted down for the metal

because it was needed for weaponry or engineering,

but this statue survived that fate

by being buried underwater.

- Mariottini alerts Italian authorities

and he joins a salvage team to bring up that statue

along with a second one that's discovered nearby.

- These things are made of solid bronze,

six and a half feet tall and roughly 900 pounds a piece.

So raising them

is going to be a massive, massive undertaking.

- The team works in shifts

to dislodge the statues from the bottom

and then they raise them to the surface

using what we call lift bags,

which are big bags filled with air,

and the air slowly expands as it gets closer to the surface,

so it helps you lift very heavy objects.

- [Narrator] When researchers clean them up,

they discover these statues are from ancient Greece.

- [Ashley] And they are 2,500 years old.

They become known as the Riace Bronzes.

- At first, they're thought to be Greek warriors.

Then later research determines

that one of them may be Eumolpus,

the son of Poseidon, a Greek demigod.

- [Narrator] While the original purpose

of these statues is unknown,

researchers wonder how such valuable artifacts

ended up at the bottom of the sea.

- Some people believe

they may have fallen off of a ship in transport

or they were in the cargo hold of a ship that sunk.

- Others say that the statues might be part of a temple

that's now submerged due to rising sea level.

- [Narrator] Incredibly, these are two of only 30

intact Greek bronze statues ever found

from this time period.

- Investigators have returned to excavate parts of the site.

They're hoping to find out

how these amazing relics could have ended up lost

at the bottom of the Ionian Sea in the first place.

- 73 years before those statues are found,

another underwater discovery

scares the hell out of an unsuspecting diver.

- In 1900, a crew of Greek sponge divers

is sailing to Tunisia, but due to rough seas,

they decide to shelter on the Greek island of Antikythera.

- These divers go out looking for sponges off the coast.

A diver named Elias Stadiatis

was the first to get in the water.

- He's barely down a minute

before he starts tugging on the line.

Suddenly, they know he's in distress,

they bring him up as quickly as they can

and he is white as a sheet.

They ask him what's wrong

and he says, "The floor of the ocean is covered

with the bodies of dead, naked people."

- [Narrator] He's discovered one of the oldest

and most important shipwrecks ever found,

a Roman cargo vessel that sank in the first century BC.

- It's the first shipwreck

to really be investigated by archaeologists

because its cargo has so many artifacts.

Inside the ship, there are three life-size marble horses,

hundreds of works of art, jewelry and coins.

- You might have heard about the wreck's most famous find,

the Antikythera Mechanism,

a sort of manual astronomical calculator that's raised

all sorts of questions about ancient technology.

- [Narrator] But that's not the only puzzling thing

discovered that day.

- Those dead naked bodies Stadiatis reported,

are actually statues

and none more mysterious

than what's become known as the Antikythera Ephebe.

- This is a life-size bronze statue depicting

a young muscular Greek man,

and it comes from the fourth century BC

and is arguably considered to be

one of the best preserved Greek statues from that period.

- An Ephebe is a term that's used

to describe a young man in military training.

That was just a generic name

given to the statue in the early 1900s,

for lack of a better term.

- But experts have come to believe

the statue depicts someone specific.

- [Narrator] Many scholars think it might even be

a divine figure from Greek mythology.

- Some think it could be Apollo,

some think it could be Hercules, the son of Zeus.

This would obviously be his younger self, before the beard.

- The Ephebe was apparently sculpted

holding some sort of object in his hand.

That part was already missing by the time of the discovery

and for over a century now,

scholars have been trying to figure out what that thing was.

- Some believe it might be the Greek mythological character

Paris, and he was holding an apple

given to the goddess, Aphrodite.

- Another school of thought believes

he's the legendary mythological warrior, Perseus,

and what's missing from his hand

is the severed head of the gorgon Medusa.

- [Narrator] As researchers continue to explore the wreck,

in 2023, they finally find new evidence, human skeletons.

- Scientists are hoping to extract DNA

from the remains that were found on the shipwreck

so they can learn more about the people that were on board.

- The more they learn about this wreck,

the better chance they have

of solving all of its many puzzles.

- Sometimes, sacred objects are destroyed in war,

but in 2014, an attack on a holy site

reveals something completely unexpected.

- In June 2014, the Islamic state of Iraq,

also known as Isis or ISIL,

are seizing parts of the country.

[gunfire]

- As part of their mission,

they're intent on destroying cultural heritage sites

that don't conform to their version of Islam.

- One site that they decide to destroy

is the mosque of Nabi Yunus in Mosul.

This place is most famous for housing a tomb

that's believed to be the final resting place of Yunus,

a figure you may probably know better as Jonah,

the biblical prophet that gets swallowed by a whale.

- Jonah isn't just important

in the Christian and Jewish scriptures,

he's also mentioned in the Quran.

But Isis decides regardless

to destroy the mosque which contains the tomb.

[explosion]

- [Narrator] The dynamite blast is caught on camera

and seen around the world.

It seems like the end of the story for this sacred site.

- But in 2017, Iraqi defense forces liberate the area

and they find something surprising

where the mosque once was.

The destruction unintentionally revealed

an ancient palace built by the Assyrians.

- The Assyrians were an ancient kingdom in the Middle East

dating back to the 21st century BC.

Their palaces were famous

for their intricate art, architecture and wall carvings,

and sure enough, that's just what's unearthed in the rubble.

- The underground passages still have

colossal statues in place and they have also carvings

of religious inscriptions

that date back to the sixth century BC.

- [Narrator] When researchers study the discoveries,

one artifact stands out.

[dramatic music]

- It's a set of wall reliefs that depicts rows of women.

Some speculate that the women are goddesses.

Others say they're Assyrian women

carrying offerings to the gods.

- Up until this point,

the Assyrian artifacts that have been found

usually depict men.

The women, when they are shown,

are depicted as spoils of war, captives.

- This is a little bit different

in that it shows three women facing the front,

not being led off anywhere,

not in profile as you usually find.

So what does this mean?

This relief indicates that Assyrian women

probably played a bigger role in religious activities

than we had understood before this discovery.

- So the terror group destroys something

that they felt was sacrilegious,

but ironically, what they end up doing

is shedding light on women and religion

and one of the earliest cultures known to man.

- [Narrator] Explosives aren't the only way

to reveal ancient artifacts.

Sometimes, a big find can be hiding in plain sight.

- In 2015, Alba Fedeli is a PhD student

at the University of Birmingham in England,

working in the library.

- As she's reading

ancient Middle Eastern manuscripts for her thesis,

she comes across a very early copy of the Quran.

- Thumbing through it, Fedeli realizes

that two leaves of the document

seem different from all the rest.

- She studied dozens of early Quranic manuscripts,

and even though there are similarities

when it comes to the handwriting on these leaves,

there are also some specific differences.

- [Narrator] Fedeli decides to have the pages carbon-dated

and the results are astonishing.

- Not only are these pages old,

they may, in fact, be the oldest pieces of the Quran

that we have in existence.

- The carbon dating says that

the parchment was created somewhere between

568 and 645 AD.

- This dating indicates that these pages

may even have been written

at the time when the prophet Mohammed was still alive.

- Mohammed dies in 632 AD

so even if these documents date to just a little later,

there's a real chance that whoever wrote them

heard his teachings firsthand.

- Whatever the case, the text on these pages

very closely resembles the modern-day Quran,

which shows us that not much has changed over the centuries.

- It's not known whether

other pages of the Birmingham document are still out there

or if they've been destroyed.

- What we do know is that

this is one of the most amazing finds

in the history of Islam, and what's amazing

is that it was hiding in plain sight on a bookshelf

for nearly a hundred years.

- Imagine unearthing the lost words of Jesus in a buried jar

or finding a tower of human skulls.

One thing is certain, there are many more sacred finds

out there just waiting to be discovered.

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