Original subtitles

In Iraq, a pioneering team

of archeologists unearths new evidence of the final days of one of the Bible's

infamous "cities of sin," Nineveh.

This is definitely a sign of a huge fire.

As they dig beneath the charred remains

of a monumental gateway,

they make a horrifying discovery.

Along with traces of fire, we found two sets of human remains

buried under the collapsed building.

The merciless destruction of Nineveh

was foreshadowed in the Bible.

Could these be the remains of its people who fell victim to the prophecy?

They must have been killed during the conquest of Nineveh...

and it was lying there until we discovered it

2,300 years later.

The stories in the Bible are famous across the world.

They tell of great battles between good and evil,

earth-shaking catastrophes, and heroic characters.

Now, new archeological discoveries

buried in the Middle East for thousands of years

are shedding light on the real events that may have given rise to these legends.

The Bible's Book of Jonah

tells of the notorious city of Nineveh,

home to a people so sinful that God sent them a prophet,

bringing a message of doom:

Nineveh would be destroyed as a result of its wicked ways.

This season...

Can you clean this surface here?

...international teams of archeologists are on a mission

to uncover the truth

about the real city of Nineveh.

Our cameras have been given special access

to archeological digs within recent conflict zones.

They use pioneering technology...

If you zoom in on the skull...

...to unlock the secrets of this infamous city

and what ultimately caused its downfall.

In the heart of the city of Mosul in Northern Iraq,

German-Iraqi teams of archeologists

hunt for what remains of Nineveh.

With few trees for shade, temperatures in the area

can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit,

so Stefan Maul and Jan Heiler start digging at dawn.

Nineveh is one of the oldest cities on Earth,

founded more than 7,000 years ago.

In Biblical times,

it was home to a people called the Assyrians.

Today, its ruins lie scattered beneath the streets of Mosul,

Iraq's second-largest city.

Coordinates first.

- Adjust the level. - 242.

Jan and Stefan are digging in a region

that has seen huge destruction in recent years.

This area where we're standing in right now

are the leftovers of the destruction of the reconstruction of the Nergal Gate,

which was destroyed by the Islamic State during their occupation of Mosul.

The Nergal Gate

was the grandest entrance to the city of Nineveh.

Its colossal towers were reconstructed

following excavations in the mid-20th century.

The team has been working through the rubble

of this modern structure.

What was unexpected for us, and quite a surprise,

was that we had originally believed that

the whole of the gate had been excavated in the 1960s,

but when we were starting to remove the debris,

we realized that this was actually not so, so this was a big surprise in itself.

The team has found incredible original reliefs

carved 2,700 years ago.

And what's more...

That's nine meters, 63...

...this year, an entirely new chamber

within the Nergal Gate buried underground.

Jan works carefully with dig co-supervisor Ulrike Bürger

to record its dimensions.

Eleven meters, 87 centimeters.

Eleven and 87.

At 32 feet long and 19 feet wide,

this enormous chamber

hints at the true scale of this legendary city.

The Bible describes Nineveh as a massive metropolis

with a river flowing through its heart.

A vast, imposing palace is the seat of a fearsome king

who rules over more than 100,000 citizens

renowned for their wickedness.

Protected by a mighty wall,

the holy text says Nineveh is so big,

it can take a person three days to walk from one side to the other.

So, what was the size of this historic city?

Okay.

Take off.

- Waypoint updated. - Perfect.

Perfect. Now, you...

Perhaps you go a little bit in that direction.

Mm-hm.

Follow a little bit the city wall,

you go, come back.

Go out of the city, and come into the gate once again.

Jan and Stefan carry out a drone survey

to visualize the true extent of the fortified city.

The drone allows us to take a bird's eye view

of the fortifications and the layout of the city

in a way that is just not possible from the ground.

Jan's survey reveals the remnants

of the ancient city walls that stretch for seven and a half miles.

In their prime, some of these walls were almost 150 feet wide.

We are now on top of the most important city gate of Nineveh.

The city wall is very long and has more than 15 gates.

The survey confirms that Nineveh was indeed enormous,

covering more than 1,800 acres,

more than twice the size of New York's Central Park.

In the Bible, it says that there lived

120,000 people in Nineveh.

We are not quite sure if that is true, but we know that Nineveh was definitely

one of the largest cities in its time.

These ruins reveal the city in its golden age, almost 3,000 years ago,

as the capital of the mighty Assyrian Empire,

filled with palaces, lush public gardens, and even libraries.

At that time, most people lived in small villages.

For many, a mega-city of 120,000 people

would have been an almost unimaginable sight.

But according to the Old Testament,

Nineveh was also a truly wicked place.

In the Bible,

the Assyrians and Nineveh are often mentioned.

There are several very important sources

for the Assyrian history, one is the Book of Jonah.

The Old Testament

tells how God orders the Israelite Jonah to deliver a terrible prophecy to Nineveh.

The city will be destroyed in 40 days.

Jonah disobeys God's command and flees by ship,

so God sends a mighty storm to stop him.

To placate the Lord, the sailors cast Jonah overboard

and an enormous whale appears, which swallows him whole.

Jonah prays for three days and three nights

until God orders the whale to release him,

so he can deliver his message to the city of sinners.

What lies behind the Bible's depiction of such a terrible ancient city?

Half a mile along the perimeter wall

is another of Nineveh's secure entrances, the Mashki Gate.

American archaeologist

Michael Danti has been excavating in this region

for over 30 years.

He's on a mission to find out more

about the Assyrians of Nineveh and how they saw themselves.

Here, underneath the ruins of this second mighty fortification,

he investigates a remarkable discovery.

The experience of finding

these reliefs was quite possibly

the greatest moment in my archeological career.

These huge gypsum slabs

clad the walls of what may have been a guardroom.

When we revealed this slab,

my brother, actually, was one of the first people to notice it.

And at first, I didn't believe him.

And then as we began to dig down below the floors...

and we revealed this slab,

we realized that we had seven slabs with well-preserved relief carving.

These reliefs were carved for the Assyrian King Sennacherib

in the 7th century BCE.

He made Nineveh his home,

transforming it into the greatest city

of the Assyrian Empire and the ancient world.

And as we dug down through the floors,

we began to realize we could see the feet of these captives

that were being marched off into captivity.

The reliefs depict the Assyrians

as mighty conquerors.

Muscular soldiers trek through new lands, and archers attack cities.

These reliefs show the Assyrians the way that they wanted to be depicted.

As a powerful military machine

that went on regular campaigns against foreign peoples,

who are either rebelling against their rule,

or had not been incorporated into the empire.

Far from showing wickedness,

these proudly displayed carvings show the Assyrians

as warlike, even heroic.

It is clear that the stories in the Bible offer a different perspective.

They are authored by a people called the ancient Israelites,

who may have suffered at the hands of the Assyrians.

How much did their experience

reflect the reality of Nineveh and its empire?

To investigate the extent to which the Israelite people

really did suffer under the Assyrians,

Ido Koch has come to Megiddo...

500 miles west of Nineveh in modern-day Israel.

I was born here. This is my childhood landscape.

And this is where I live.

And this place is also meaningful for billions of people around the world.

Megiddo was probably one of the most important centers

of the Kingdom of Israel.

Ancient texts say that in 732 BCE,

the Assyrians successfully conquered much of the Kingdom of Israel.

The Assyrian Empire mobilized a huge army,

and the locals had almost no ability to resist.

Megiddo was one of the Israelite cities

that fell to the invading Assyrian war machine.

The image of the Assyrians

besieging, conquering cities is well justified.

Unlike sites, such as Lachish,

where the destruction, the siege of the Assyrians

is evident across the site,

in Megiddo, there is no sign of a conquest nor destruction.

Why is there no evidence of an Assyrian attack here in Megiddo?

The largest buildings that were ever built

in Megiddo are these two palaces

that were built by the Assyrians, according to Assyrian blueprints.

Here, the Governor and his officials dominated the city,

monitoring the inhabitants.

For the Assyrians, Megiddo was of huge tactical importance.

The roads connecting Syria,

the Northern Levant to the North, all the way to Egypt in the south,

were the major reasons

why the Assyrians rebuilt and settled in Megiddo.

If there is no reason to destroy a town, the Assyrians did not destroy it,

but modified it to fill the needs of the empire.

They captured this important city intact,

and preserved its assets.

Despite the image we have of the destructive Assyrian empire,

they had a very smart colonial policy.

Whenever they encountered a kingdom with an advantage,

they immediately incorporated it into the empire.

For example, in the case of the Kingdom of Israel,

it was famous for its chariots.

Soon after the conquest of Israel,

we hear, in Assyrian sources, about Israelite chariots.

The Assyrians embraced

advantageous new technology from regions they conquered.

The city of Megiddo appears to have surrendered

to Assyrian rule without a fight.

How did the Assyrians manage such a feat?

In the Mashki Gate in Mosul...

Michael Danti examines digital archives

to investigate an elaborate object discovered near Nineveh.

I'm looking at embossed bronze bands.

And the Assyrians are showing, in these designs,

acts of unspeakable violence.

These bronze panels reinforced a pair

of 22-foot high wooden doors, the entrance to a nearby temple.

The images recount the capture of an enemy city

by the Assyrian army.

There are scenes of Assyrian soldiers

decapitating people, cities in flame,

and foreigners being dismembered by these soldiers.

According to Biblical and historical texts,

the Assyrians laid brutal siege to cities that resisted their power,

systematically destroying their fortifications

and infrastructure.

They displayed the severed heads of defeated enemies on city walls

to instill fear in those they conquered.

Collective punishment was a common tactic.

Entire villages were exterminated or enslaved

in retaliation for the rebellion of a few.

The Assyrians carved these acts of brutality

into monumental reliefs, celebrating their own ruthlessness.

We wonder, sometimes, did the Assyrians commit such atrocities?

I think, unfortunately, the answer is yes.

If a city did resist, this was what was going to happen to you.

In places like Megiddo, the violent reputation of the Assyrians

may have been powerful enough to cause the town to surrender

at the mere sight of their approaching forces.

The Assyrians really earned a reputation

as a highly violent and oppressive empire,

and surrounding kingdoms were extremely wary

of the Assyrians.

With such a fearsome reputation,

why did the Assyrians feel the need

to fortify Nineveh so strongly?

At the Nergal Gate dig in Iraq,

Jan and the team explore the newly exposed gateway ruins.

They're the first to set eyes on this structure

for thousands of years.

It's amazing.

Professor Maul is gonna be very happy about it.

The survival of these original structures

beneath ground level is an archaeologist's dream come true.

It offers an unprecedented and unexpected opportunity

to explore the city's secrets, assumed to be lost in the midst of time.

They want to investigate when the gate was built and why.

The new chamber is a treasure trove of discoveries.

What is very interesting about this

is the preservation's very rare.

We have many, many, many inscribed bricks,

and they all bear the same inscription, and it says, "The palace is Sennacherib.

The King of the World. The King of the Land of Assur."

These mud bricks are inscribed with the earliest form of writing,

known as cuneiform.

Each one would have been inscribed by hand using a reed stylus.

We know that this building

was built by Sennacherib, the Assyrian King,

because he talks about this in his inscriptions.

He tells how he, uh, built the whole of the city wall

and all of its gates.

He expanded the city significantly.

And in particular, this building here, the Nergal Gate.

Now that they are nearing the ancient ground level,

the team can piece together

the original appearance of this megastructure.

Built from tons of mud bricks plastered with clay,

the Nergal Gate towered 80 feet tall.

Guarding its entrances and hallways were huge statues of divine winged bulls.

The newly discovered chamber the team has excavated

lies deep inside

and was possibly a room for the city guards

to scrutinize anyone who wished to enter.

The Nergal Gate was a monumental checkpoint,

one of 15 colossal gates protecting the city.

This feat of engineering would have made an imposing entrance to the city.

Jan and Stefan's excavations

show the Nergal Gate was built as part of King Sennacherib's

huge expansion of the city.

During this time when Sennacherib built

this new city of Nineveh,

the Assyrian Empire was very prosperous.

This immense fortified gateway

is evidence that Nineveh needed to defend itself,

despite being the capital of one of the most powerful

and feared empires in the world.

They had created enemies across the region,

among them Jonah's people, the Israelites.

The Assyrians had suppressed

almost all the people from Syria, from Palestine,

from Turkey, Babylonians.

Released from the whale,

Jonah obeys God's orders and goes to Nineveh to deliver a warning.

He walks the city,

telling citizens they will be destroyed in 40 days

as punishment for their wicked ways.

The King of Nineveh, fearing God's prophecy,

takes off his clothes and dresses in sackcloth

to show his humility.

His citizens follow suit,

even dressing up the animals in sackcloth too.

And they pray for forgiveness.

Seeing that their penance was real, the Lord showed them mercy.

It's a dramatic story,

but could there be a grain of historical truth in it?

Did the Assyrians really abandon their warlike ways,

as they did in the Book of Jonah?

Back at the Mashki Gate, Michael Danti thinks a clue

could lie in an ancient Assyrian text,

found just 20 feet from where he's sitting.

This tablet has cuneiform script.

This particular tablet gives us a list of year names

and important events.

What you see is the king going on military campaign

and conquering foreign people.

The Assyrian kings kept meticulous records

of their military achievements from the 9th century BCE,

but Michael has noticed the entries suddenly change.

After the period of 763 BC,

we see over and over that the Assyrian King stays home.

He's not on these important military campaigns

conquering new territory.

The Assyrians had earned a reputation

as a highly oppressive and aggressive empire.

When we see something like this year list,

where the Assyrians are not going on military campaign,

it really defies expectations.

This sudden change

coincides with the time period of the Bible's Book of Jonah,

in which the prophet visited the city on a mission to end its wickedness.

The Book of Jonah takes place

probably sometime in the first half of the 8th century.

We know the kings of Assyria are not going out on military campaigns.

Were the Assyrians weak during this time?

Or were they just not interested, for some reason,

in going on military campaigns?

One theory is that the events described

in the story of Jonah might reflect a period of turmoil

that started with the death of a powerful Assyrian king

in 824 BCE.

Infighting between provincial rulers followed...

diverting resources away from conquests for almost a century.

Perhaps it looked as though the Assyrians had repented,

but the realities of it are, for me, that it was a period of civil war.

If this period did inspire the story of Jonah,

the Assyrian kings' repentance didn't last for long.

After a brief hiatus, they resumed their campaigns

under a new king,

expanding the empire even further than before.

They were highly successful,

but were the Assyrians any more brutal than their rivals?

In Israel, Ido Koch is traveling

50 miles south of Megiddo to the town of Tel Hadid.

He wants to find out what life was like under Assyrian rule.

Hadid was destroyed by the Assyrians

during the late eighth century BCE,

during the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel,

but shortly after the destruction of Hadid,

it was rebuilt.

Ido has been Project Director here

for six years,

and this year, his team is focused on surveying

the strange features dotted across the ancient town.

So, what is the diameter of the central hole?

So, the diameter of the central hole

- is around 20 centimeters. - Mm-hm.

Um, and the larger one is around 45 centimeters.

Okay, and so the next step will be to... clean around.

And then we can take a 3D model.

These holes are evidence

of an ancient olive oil processing facility.

Ido and his team collect data

to estimate the scale of this specialized industry here.

This is one of the major

olive oil extraction installations in Tel Hadid.

Olive oil was one of the most important agricultural product of the region.

This olive press is an ingenious piece

of ancient engineering, unique to this region.

They placed sacks full of olives into the rock-cut basins

and used weighted beams to squeeze out the oil,

a highly efficient method.

There were over 25 oil presses at Tel Hadid,

an operation on an industrial scale.

Our measurements, including basins and the depth,

the size of the niche,

the length of the beam, allow us to estimate

that the village of Hadid has produced over 5,000 liters

of olive oil per year.

This is far beyond the consumption of the inhabitants of the village.

The oil was a valuable commodity

which would have been used across the empire.

This flourishing industry of olive oil production in Hadid

during the time of the Assyrian rule

means that the Assyrians were not only about

conquest and destruction.

They invested in the local economy,

economy that would have provide the needs of the empire.

Ido scours ancient texts

to find out how the Assyrians ran this lucrative industry

after their takeover.

These are two clay tablets found during the excavations of the houses

of the inhabitants of Hadid during the 7th century.

They are inscribed in cuneiform in the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian,

the language of the empire during this time,

and they document economic transactions between the inhabitants of the place.

More importantly, the names of the people involved in the deals are mentioned,

and they are mostly Akkadian, Aramaic,

and only one might be an Israelite name.

The names in the documents

are from other regions conquered by the Assyrians

and assimilated into the empire.

Ido believes these names expose a cruel Assyrian tactic.

The Assyrians had a colonial policy of forced migration.

The residents of captured cities were deported to distant lands,

marching hundreds of miles,

taking only the possessions they could carry.

They were sent where their skills were of most use to the empire,

like the olive oil factory in Tel Hadid.

Now imagine that, the Assyrians deported people

from the other side of the empire,

forced them to march for thousands of kilometers,

and they found themselves here, in the middle of nowhere.

They had different climate, different landscape,

different language to understand.

And this is exactly what the Assyrians wanted to achieve,

that the deportees will feel uprooted,

will feel foreigners in their new homes,

and by that, they'll be able to control them even better.

Ido thinks many occupants of Tel Hadid

suffered a similar fate

to make way for the new arrivals.

The Israelites that survived the war

were deported and were sent to different parts of the empire.

Most of them found their ways to the Assyrian heartland,

but few of them were sent even further to the Iranian Plateau

to supply the needs of the Assyrian army that was based there facing

the enemies of Assyria to the east.

This callous policy of deportation

was vital for controlling Assyria's vast empire.

The deportation conducted by the Assyrians

in every place broke down any resistance.

Indeed, in almost all territories that were conquered by the Assyrians

and that their populations were deported,

there was no resistance.

With such a foolproof method of quelling rebellion,

how did mighty Assyria fall?

Back in the Assyrian's capital city of Nineveh,

the dig team makes a startling new discovery.

It could reveal a turning point for this ancient superpower.

Excavation is always exciting

because you find traces of an ancient culture,

and you find evidence for things which you had not known before.

When we started the season, we started more or less

at the top level of the stone slabs.

And then, when we started, relatively quickly,

we reached a layer that had a lot of evidence of destruction.

We had all of this charcoal...

You can still see it here.

Yes. You can also still see the burn damage on the stones themselves.

So, we have a lot of evidence of destruction in this area.

And definitely in this gate

one sees traces of the very last days of this city,

which had completely destroyed and burnt down.

Archeologists have found a similar blackened layer

in multiple sites across Nineveh.

It suggests that the entire city was destroyed in one catastrophic event.

And when the team digs underneath it,

it makes a chilling discovery...

bone.

The newly discovered bones at Nineveh

lie in the southern corner of the Nergal Gate.

They are incredibly fragile,

so the archeologists must work carefully.

They use photogrammetry to record the exact position of the bones.

The first thing that showed up was this left mandible.

Ulrike slowly scrapes away the Earth

to reveal two skeletons.

When we tried to uncover them, we, uh, realized that these were humans.

The discovery is both horrifying and intriguing.

It could shed light on a poorly understood chapter

in Nineveh's long history,

its almost total destruction in 612 BCE.

They must have been killed during the conquest of Nineveh,

but we think that the fire started after the bodies

were already lying on the ground.

It is exciting because we

somehow witnessed the last days of Nineveh.

This gives us detailed information about the end of this city.

Who were these people? And how did they die?

This layer could hold more secrets to how the city of Nineveh fell.

In Israel's Tel Aviv University,

Ido Koch analyzes objects found in the town of Tel Hadid.

These finds could shed light

on how the Assyrians treated those who they defeated

and deported to distant lands.

While we don't know their names,

while we don't exactly know how their life was,

this gives us some information.

So, by that, we get a bit closer to their story

that otherwise will be unknown in the, the historical records.

There is one item in particular which Ido wants to examine more closely...

a tiny stamp seal.

Yuval, Israa, Seji...

come and have a look.

This is the seal found in area A5, at the same place as the ceramics.

This is probably one of the most unique finds we have from Hadid.

It is a stamp seal made of mother of pearl.

The incised scene on the base of the stamp seal

is representation of the moon God of Harran.

The mother of pearl this seal is made from

can only have come from the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea,

which leads to a startling conclusion.

What we have here might have been

the belonging of one of the deportees.

This might have been what they held in hand

during this long walk from Babylonia all the way to Hadid.

So, this is indeed a precious item we have.

This precious amulet carried from afar

was found in a rubbish pit, alongside cooking pots and jugs.

Why were these personal objects discarded?

We do not know how this garbage was created

because you do not throw away complete vessels,

so something broke them apart,

everything was shoved into the repository pit,

and then, we found it 2,700 years later.

There are no records to explain why the inhabitants of Tel Hadid

suddenly discarded all of their belongings...

but it hints at the speed of the Assyrian Empire's collapse.

What became of the deported people here after the empire fell remains a mystery.

There is no information what happened to them at the end.

Did they leave? Did they stay? Did they join other communities?

We have no indications of the destiny of these people,

but they were left alone with no empire to protect them anymore.

Rather than succumbing to the wrath of God,

as the Book of Jonah suggests,

the archeological evidence both in Tel Hadid

and across the empire points to a different conclusion.

The empire was brought down by a coalition of Assyria's enemies,

seeking revenge for years of oppression.

Could the grisly discoveries at the Nergal Gate

help piece together Nineveh's final days?

Along with the traces of the big fire,

uh, we uncovered two sets of human remains...

that were not intentional burials.

In the dig house at the Nergal Gate,

Ulrike Bürger uses 3D scans to examine the two skeletons.

She wants to find out who these people were

and how they died.

You can see that it's lying, like, directly on this burnt mud floor.

Yes.

So, must have died before the chamber collapsed.

Yes.

And then all the burnt debris fell on top

and covered it until we excavated it.

Mm-hm.

The two people appear to have suffered violent deaths

shortly before the Gate was burned to the ground.

The next step is to establish their identity.

A pair of earrings found on one of the skeletons

provides a clue.

If you zoom in on the skull...

- Mm-hm. - ...you can see where we found

the earrings that came with the individual.

It must have been on the left ear.

- Mm-hm. - And the second one

was found... down here in the neck or shoulder area,

it must have fallen from the right ear.

These were the only two objects that came with this individual.

The lack of armor or weapons

suggests these people were not soldiers.

From their bones, Ulrike can tell they suffered

head injuries and broken limbs.

I think the individual was pretty young

because the teeth were quite well preserved,

they were not too much destroyed.

- Mm-hm. Mm-hm. - Very little holes, abrasions.

And then, also if you go to the pelvis...

You can see that this edge

hasn't grown together with the rest of the pelvis

and this happens at about 20 years.

Mm-hm.

So, it must have been a young adult.

Yeah.

Ulrike puts all the clues together

to reconstruct a shocking story.

I think that this is, um, a citizen of Nineveh

who tried to maybe hide in the Gate during the siege

or tried to escape while the fighting was going on,

but this person didn't make it and was killed.

We think the individual was killed

before the destruction of the building.

Yeah. It must have gone hand in hand.

This wasn't a battle.

These were teenagers fleeing a besieged city.

They were left unburied and the Gate was burnt to the ground

shortly after they died.

We think that the soldiers had left their guard posts to fight

because, um, there was no evidence of soldiers.

They must have left to fight against the enemy

either in front of the Gate or maybe already inside of the Gate.

When you discover the skeleton of someone who died in violence,

it makes you think about the fate of this person.

It lets you think about, like, all the victims of the, the wars

and the, the conflicts that are going on, even now at our days.

It seems the inhabitants of the city of Nineveh

suffered the same fate as so many under their rule.

These discoveries show it wasn't just the Assyrians

who used ruthless tactics in warfare.

Their enemies matched their brutality.

Who was responsible

for finally bringing Nineveh down?

In 612 BC, the city of Nineveh

was besieged by a coalition of the Babylonians,

and the Medes, and other people

who had been suppressed by Assyria for centuries.

In the Book of Jonah, God shows Nineveh mercy,

but ultimately, its historical enemies did not.

The kingdoms brutalized by the Assyrians, the Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians,

formed an alliance and attacked the city.

They breached Nineveh's defenses and went on a revenge-fueled rampage.

The attackers were ruthless, slaughtering civilians in their path...

including the fleeing teenagers whose remains the team has found.

After three months of fierce fighting, the mighty city of Nineveh,

the powerhouse of the Assyrian Empire, was no more.

A coalition of the city's enemies successfully ended Nineveh's reign.

They did with the city that what the Assyrians did for centuries.

They entered into the city,

they destroyed the city, they burnt it down.

They killed the population of the city of Nineveh,

and the rest was driven out of the city and deported to other countries,

as the Assyrian had done

with all the other people surrounding them.

The villains of the Old Testament

had finally got their comeuppance.

The Bible has quite a bit to say

about the destruction of Nineveh and the downfall of the Assyrian Empire.

Since the Assyrians had been so oppressive,

it was seen as divine justice when their empire came to an end.

And it was a very thorough end.

Its cities were largely abandoned and its countryside laid waste.

For many people of faith, the stories of the Old Testament

are literal, historical truth.

Others believe the stories of the Old Testament

draw on real events to deliver a moral lesson.

The Book of Jonah is essentially a parable,

a story to teach forgiveness of those who repent.

Books of the Bible that deal with the Assyrians

were probably written several centuries after the events of 612 BC,

and there's a bit of a mixing of traditions

where we can see the writers are bringing in information

about Babylon that is from a later time period.

But there is a core of truth to it as well,

a historical reality.

What archeology brings to it

is the ability to refine that understanding from the texts.

This season's pioneering excavations

at Nineveh

have unearthed previously unimagined secrets.

The miraculous survival of rooms and reliefs

after waves of destruction,

has shed light on Nineveh's Assyrian warlords

and their fortified capital city.

The remains of Israelite towns

give glimpses of the fates of conquered peoples,

and the chance discovery of two skeletons reveals the human cost of the uprising

that toppled one of the most powerful empires

the world had ever seen.

The Bible provides a valuable perspective of this empire

from the viewpoint of those it oppressed.

The Assyrians' wicked reputation in the Book of Jonah

draws on historical realities and folk memories

to create a parable of forgiveness that survives to this day.