The Hunt for Petra’s Lost Tombs | Expedition Unknown | Discovery

Well, I have flown from the deserts of Saudi Arabia all the way to the nation of Jordan. This was once the heartland of the Nabatian Kingdom, but their city of Petra is still a ways off. To get there, it’s a 3-hour drive to the south. Okay, okay, maybe 4 hours. Nabataeans probably had a lot less traffic.

Amman is something of a mirage because, as soon as you clear the capital, Jordan reveals her true nature—vast, desolate, and absolutely stunning. Look at this place—woo, like another world.

After a long drive in 100° heat, I’ve consumed every drop of water in the car and finally approach the canyons surrounding Petra. There are, of course, no cars allowed in the ancient city of Petra, which means I’m going to have to transfer to a more traditional form of transportation.

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Even on the back of a spitting, ornery camel, the entrance into Petra is awe-inspiring. This is the Siq, a nearly mile-long slot canyon whose walls rise almost 300 feet above the desert floor. It offers shade, but more importantly, protection, concealing the Nabatian grand capital city from the outside world.

How well did it work? Well, Western scholars had no idea what was down here until only 200 years ago. Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, assuming the alias Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdallah, earned the trust of a local guide and gained access to the ruins, making him the first outsider to lay eyes on this.

Look at that.
Wow, this is Al-Khazneh, better known as the Treasury. One look, and it takes your breath away—a stunning rose-colored facade carved out of the solid rock itself. It has become the emblem of the Nabatian Kingdom.

Here to welcome me to the site is my old friend, archaeologist Pierce Paul.

Pierce Paul: Josh, always knew someday you’d come walking back through my door.
Josh: Oh, even quotes Raiders. Last time I saw you, you were trying to drown me.
Pierce Paul: Not successfully, mind you. A year ago, he was excavating the tomb of a pharaoh in a flooded pyramid in Sudan, and I was dumb enough to follow him.
Josh: Oh my word. But finding the remains of a pharaoh in his tomb was just a side quest to his work as the head of the American Center of Research in Jordan, where he and his team are investigating the mysteries of Petra.

Pierce Paul: The Holy Grail is in there, right? I mean, but it has to stay behind the Great Seal.
Josh: Of course. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade made this place incredibly famous. I mean, if you know Petra, you know this building. It’s one of the new Seven Wonders of the World.

Pierce Paul: This is only the tip of the iceberg, though.
Josh: Yes, Petra is a lot more than just this building.
Pierce Paul: Yeah, if you really want to understand Petra, we’ve got to go for a walk and check it out.
Josh: Alright, lead the way.

Time for an all-access tour of the Petra that many never see.

I know it looks like this part of the canyon is empty, right? But if you look closely, every surface has been modified. All of this has been shaped. A lot of it’s below where we’re standing today, though. Part of this city is buried. A lot of this city is buried.

Josh: Wow. The valley we’re walking in has become choked with sand, burying many of the earliest parts of the city underground. Later generations just built more structures on top.

Pierce Paul: How many of these are there?
Josh: There’s more than a thousand cataloged. It’s insane. The Nabataeans transformed rock into a living city in one of the driest places on Earth. Construction on Petra began in the 4th century BC. Over the next 300 years, the city grew from desert outpost to engineering marvel, home to as many as 30,000 people. Yet, by some accounts, only 15% of Petra has been excavated. And the people who built all of this are virtually unknown.

Josh: So if I’m being honest, the Nabataeans are a mystery to me.
Pierce Paul: Join the club. They are a mystery. Right? There’s a lot we don’t know about them. There’s much more we don’t know than we do.

Josh: Where do they come from?
Pierce Paul: Let’s start with that. I’d love to be able to tell you.

Josh: Where do we think they came from?
Pierce Paul: We think they came as a confederation of what we would think of as tribes today from the northern Arabian deserts, right?

Josh: So when the Nabataeans come on the scene, who were the big players?
Pierce Paul: So around the Nabataeans in their early history, it’s the Greeks—Alexander the Great—and then you’ve got the Romans coming after that. You’ve got the Ptolemies in Egypt, and you’ve got a couple of Mesopotamian civilizations right in the middle of all of this. Out in these deserts are the Nabataeans.

Josh: Yes, the Nabataeans are desert people. They’ve mastered what it is to cross them, to live in them, to be around them. People just can’t come into their home and do what they do. Right?

Pierce Paul: So the Nabataeans, they’re the highway of the ancient world. And when you want to move things like frankincense, myrrh, who are you gonna call?
Josh: The Nabataeans.

Pierce Paul: Obviously, the Silk Road and Incense Road, which moved the most valuable goods in the ancient world, both ran right through here. In fact, every major trade route from the East to Greece, Rome, and Egypt crossed this desert. So these guys start out like long-haul truckers.
Josh: Yeah, they’re like the teamsters of the ancient world.
Pierce Paul: Yeah, they start off independent contractors, right? And then they get organized. They are the teamsters.

Josh: And we see in all of this construction, they must have ended up really wealthy.
Pierce Paul: The numbers that are thrown around in the ancient texts are like Monopoly money. And money, even in ancient times, means power—power that we see reflected here at Petra, where the Nabataeans somehow carved all of this, borrowing architectural and artistic elements from all their trading partners—Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians—to impress upon anyone who visits, “We are important.” And impress they did.

Josh: Huh, and they have a theater?
Pierce Paul: They do indeed.
Josh: Wow. Exhibit A—an 8,500-seat Roman-style amphitheater carved into the bedrock itself.

Pierce Paul: You know, when you think about desert-dwelling people, you think about nomads, you think about a simple way of life, a humble way of life. This communicates something very different.
Josh: It’s not that.
Pierce Paul: Right? This says art. This says culture. There’s writing and performing, singing. This is sophistication.
Josh: Yeah, the mathematics to build all this in the first place. To understand the geography.

Pierce Paul: Sadly, I don’t remember any great Nabataean plays.
Josh: Not a lot of Nabataean writing survives, and this is the problem. With the exception of a handful of inscriptions, the Nabataeans didn’t exactly leave us their biography.

And it isn’t just writing that we’re missing. Many of the small caves cut into the canyon are, in fact, tombs. But every single one of them is empty. No bodies, no offerings, no relics. Nearly all of the structures here are mysterious, like the so-called Great Temple, which may have actually been a palace.

Josh: Okay, so when does this get built?
Pierce Paul: So this is associated with the reign of a king named Aretas IV.
Josh: He’s like one of the big kings.
Pierce Paul: Yeah, he’s the guy.
Josh: He’s the guy.
Pierce Paul: He’s the great builder here. The apex of Nabataean civilization is considered during this guy’s reign.

Josh: King Aretas IV ruled from 9 BC to 40 AD—a fairly busy time in this corner of the world. In fact, he’s mentioned twice in the New Testament. But Nabataean kings may have been viewed more as administrators than royalty. According to folklore, they walked freely among their people. This modesty may explain why no confirmed royal Nabataean tombs have ever been found.

Josh: So Aretas is associated with the most famous constructions here?
Pierce Paul: Yes, and he’s also associated with the most famous structure here at Petra—the Treasury, where we started. But it’s a bit of a mystery, and that’s actually what we’re working on right now.