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00:00This is a truly extraordinary place, which at last is revealing its secrets.
00:18A place of legend and wonder, a lost city carved into these rocks that was home to one of
00:37the ancient world's most enigmatic and influential civilisations.
00:45A nomadic tribe called the Nabataeans, who burst out of the deserts of Arabia, built a vast
00:52trading empire spanning continents, and then seemingly disappeared from the history books.
01:01Here's a story that has to be told.
01:08I'm hitting the road in a once-in-a-lifetime journey across the ancient world.
01:16An epic quest from the historic settlements of Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia and the wonder of
01:24Petra in Jordan, to Greek islands like Kos, and the Bay of Naples in Italy.
01:36With a network of world-class researchers, we'll be analysing brand new evidence.
01:45Oh!
01:46Look at this!
01:47Testing exciting theories, revealing new finds.
01:53You're making history, McKaylee, you're discovering here.
01:58And exploring uncharted territory.
02:00You can see it!
02:02All to start to reconstruct the Nabataean world.
02:09We'll learn from people whose heritage reaches back through the centuries to this pivotal age.
02:19I'm going to rediscover this overlooked culture, reveal how it still shapes our world, and try
02:27to solve the riddle of their mysterious fate.
02:32I want to bring them from the edges back to the centre of history, where they belong.
02:40These geniuses of history, who called themselves the Nabataean, are the key to a lost world.
02:57OK, so first, I'm on a journey to try to uncover the origins of their story, and to ask a really
03:10fundamental question, who exactly were the Nabataeans?
03:19Travelling this region for 30 years, I've come across traces of this long-forgotten civilisation,
03:25who were the architects of awe-inspiring Petra.
03:31And on this adventure, I'm going to track their impact across the centuries, revealing
03:36the Nabataeans as a missing link in the story of the ancient world, to show we can't understand
03:43classical history without them.
03:46And this is a sensational place to start.
03:51It's the ancient city of Hegra in northwest Saudi Arabia, and I'm discovering it for the
03:57first time.
03:58I'm starting my investigation here because Hegra is only now being fully explored.
04:10This UNESCO World Heritage Site is a front line for research, and for ground-breaking discoveries
04:18about Nabataean civilisation.
04:23This city was the southern trading hub of a massive, rich kingdom.
04:30It's capital, Petra, close on 500 kilometres to the north, with influence and connections
04:36that stretched from the deserts of Arabia to modern-day Egypt and key sites like the ancient
04:42port of Gaza on the Mediterranean, Bostra and Damascus in what's now Syria.
04:53Hegra flourished over 2,000 years ago.
05:00When Augustus was the first emperor of Rome, following the defeat of Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
05:08And the Kingdom of Judea was home to John the Baptist, Herod the Great, whose mother was
05:15Nabataean, by the way, and of course, Jesus.
05:22I'm investigating Hegra, looking for clues that explain the extraordinary rise of the
05:28city at this crucial moment of history.
05:34And I've been given permission to access somewhere very special.
05:39I'm heading to a unique vantage point that will give me rare perspective on this archaeological
05:45jewel.
05:46I'm researching here, so I've got special access to go up to the top.
05:54This scramble is up to a place in ancient Hegra where only archaeologists are allowed.
06:05I need to be really careful up here.
06:08It's a sensitive sight.
06:11Oh my gosh.
06:16So I've climbed up here to get a Nabataean eye view because this is what the workers who
06:26built these amazing places would have seen.
06:28And it is just extraordinary because as far as the eye can see would have been a Nabataean
06:34settlement.
06:35Hardly any of it has been excavated yet.
06:38So there are so many secrets here just waiting to be discovered.
06:57Hegra is a hive of activity because it's rare to access this range of brand new archaeology.
07:03My tech team gets to work scanning and recording, joining teams from around the world.
07:09Like conservation specialists Estia, racing to preserve the tombs.
07:14This is actually pretty incredible.
07:17Archaeologists hunting for lost artifacts.
07:20So this looks like that might be decoration or something on it, is it?
07:25This has a good chance of being able to be dateable.
07:31To a ground penetrating radar project exploring what lies under our feet.
07:37If we look around this just looks like desert landscape but there is an entire city under
07:41here.
07:42Yeah.
07:43All determined to uncover the secrets of Hegra.
07:48A team, headed by Jan Fonke and Katja Schurler, have discovered evidence of a packed urban
07:57network.
07:58This is Pompeii of the Nabataeans, right?
08:02And it's all there for us to discover.
08:10Using the latest 3D scanning and visual effects, we're going to reconstruct Hegra.
08:16In the first century CE, it was the second biggest city in the Nabataean Kingdom after Petra,
08:22a busy, densely populated, walled settlement.
08:25I want to find out how it grew and thrived in the desert, powered by the Nabataeans' unique
08:33attitude to life.
08:36Whenever the Nabataeans want to do something very important...
08:39Leila Naime directed excavations at Hegra and is one of the world's leading authorities on
08:46the Nabataeans.
08:48I'm keen to show her the model and get her take on exactly what we're discovering.
08:53So I'd love it if you can help me, because I find it a bit hard to get my head round the
08:57layout of the cities.
08:59The city itself, that one had to be protected.
09:02And so in order to protect it, they just built a city wall, a rampart.
09:06And the whole rampart of the city wall was about three kilometres long.
09:11And around it, there were about 80 bastions.
09:15Like sort of watchtowers?
09:17Yeah, watchtowers, or just places where, for instance, if there was an attack, they would
09:22just put some archers on sort of platform until the city was protected.
09:28How are they getting their water?
09:30They would be able to get access to a water table below the ground, which was very, very
09:37high.
09:38Aha.
09:39So if they dug a few metres, they would find water.
09:42At the beginning of our work, we identified 132 wells, that's a lot.
09:50It's a lot.
09:51And that says a lot about engineering.
09:53They can keep living here, that they've got their secure in their water supply.
09:58How many people do you think are living in there?
10:00Well that's a question I'm always asked.
10:01I would say a few thousand, because the urbanism is quite dense.
10:06And the whole thing is about 53 hectares.
10:09So that's already quite a large city.
10:11Yeah.
10:12I mean that's one of the things that's so exciting about this place and this study is
10:14that there is so much more to discover.
10:16You know, all these little bits of the jigsaw puzzle of evidence is slowly coming into a
10:21full picture.
10:22And this wasn't just a city of the living, it was a city of the dead.
10:29Hegra's most striking survivors are over a hundred monumental tombs, many once richly decorated.
10:38The city is in the middle.
10:40And all the tombs are built or cut in the sandstone outcrops around the city.
10:47And is that, is the visibility important?
10:49The notables, those who had these beautiful tombs built, they wanted everyone to know
10:54that they were rich enough to have a tomb as large, as decorated, as magnificent as possible.
11:02And so the largest tombs, the nicest ones, they are the most visible.
11:07And I mean, it is just extraordinary being in the site and seeing the level of preservation
11:13on those tombs.
11:14Some of them look like they were made yesterday.
11:16It is true.
11:17And one can even see very precisely the traces left by the tools which the stone cutters used
11:25to cut the tombs.
11:26That's it.
11:27And just with those details, they start to live again.
11:32Most of Hegra's tombs were looted in antiquity.
11:35But one day, Leila's team found a tantalising clue poking out of a giant sand dune.
11:44The top of a carved doorway.
11:47Inside the lost tomb were touching human remains, the first ever found here.
11:59Leading the project to analyse pre-Islamic remains here is forensic anthropologist,
12:05Lauren Swift.
12:06Lauren and her team have spent months cataloguing what they believe to be the remains of 70
12:14individuals.
12:15I'm hoping these poignant relics will bring me closer to this lost people.
12:23The amount of material that we have from these tombs is amazing and it's not something that
12:29really comes along that often.
12:30We're hopeful that we can get some ADNA, some ancient DNA.
12:34So then we can say, were the people in these tombs related and how were they related?
12:38Are they men or women?
12:40Are they children?
12:41Are they old?
12:42Do they have pathologies?
12:43Do they have trauma that they lived with?
12:45Yes.
12:46You can do a lot of work on teeth, can't you?
12:47And that tells you age, but also what people's lifestyle was like, where they're from, what
12:52they're eating.
12:53Yeah, exactly.
12:54So if we have this mandible as an example, so you can see that we've got some of the
12:57molars at the back and they're really good.
13:00And this, I mean, really interesting, they're quite ground down, those teeth.
13:04Yes.
13:05You're living in a sandy, gritty environment, it gets into the food, it grinds down the
13:09teeth.
13:10You see that a lot in Egypt, it's got a similar environment.
13:13But more than just bones have survived.
13:17Other fragments suggest the Nabataeans treated their dead, probably buried together as families,
13:24with a reverence that matched their magnificent tombs.
13:29This particular one has a lot of organic tissue, as you can see, stuck to it.
13:33And then we have some of what, you know, a shroud or some fabric that they were wrapped
13:37in that you can see.
13:38Yes.
13:39Because we hear that, that they're wrapped in layer after layer.
13:42And you know, sometimes they have dates, like necklaces of dates left with them, don't
13:45they?
13:46Sure.
13:47But look at that.
13:48That's incredible.
13:49Yeah.
13:50That level of preservation is astonishing.
13:52The evidence has reminded me that this once forgotten kingdom was a product of the decisions,
13:58ambitions and dreams of real people.
14:02And that this journey is ultimately a quest to really appreciate them.
14:10There's another place in Hegra I've been told I just have to check out if I want to understand
14:16what made the Nabataeans tick.
14:20Jabal Ithlib is a natural amphitheatre of towering rock formations outside the city walls.
14:33This was a sacred place, not just for the people of Hegra.
14:38If you look at the rock faces themselves, a lot of these holes aren't natural.
14:43They're human-made.
14:44So they're niches where the Nabataeans would have worshipped their gods.
14:48And we know that they even encourage visitors to pay respect to their own divinities here.
14:58The inhabitants of Hegra mingled here with outsiders, like visiting traders, bringing cargo to and from the city.
15:10You can just imagine people coming here in its heyday, can't you, and being really transported
15:16by the experience.
15:17And we don't know yet whether it was just the elite who were allowed here or everybody,
15:22but whoever inhabited this incredible space, they'd have been quenching their thirst with water
15:27and making offerings to their gods.
15:30And because they came from right across the region, they'd have been exchanging news and ideas.
15:36The sanctuary of Jabal Ithlib is connected to the rest of the city by this spectacular narrow canyon.
15:50So this is the Seek, the word means a chasm or a gorge, and it's leading me somewhere
15:56that was clearly super significant for the Nabataeans.
16:00Between the end of the Seek and the city walls is this incredible space, carved into the rock
16:12by millions of chisel blows. It offers more clues to the thriving cosmopolitan nature of Hegra 2,000 years ago.
16:23This is so impressive, isn't it? So this is a place that is now known as the
16:30diwan, which means a kind of meeting place or an assembly. But in the ancient world,
16:35places like this were called triclinia, which is actually a Latin word with Greek origins,
16:42that meant a three-sided banqueting hall. So the Nabataeans, we know, would have come here
16:47and had these very formal banquets that almost had a kind of ritual tinge to them.
16:53Triclinia had been made famous by Roman banquet scenes, but actually may have originated in the east.
17:08When they came here, they would have eaten and they would have done business,
17:12but there would have been a kind of sacred gloss to the things that happened here. And that makes sense for two reasons.
17:21One is that for the Nabataeans, commerce and money-making, you feel almost was a kind of religious experience.
17:30This was what really mattered to them. And at this time in the ancient world,
17:33there just isn't a stark division between religion and everyday life. This was a landscape that was thick
17:42with gods and spirits and demigods and possibility.
17:52The historical record shows that there were visitors to what could have been Nabataean territory
17:57as far back as the 7th century BCE.
18:04This is from the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal and the Assyrian kingdom was centered on Iraq at the time.
18:10It's sort of Iraq and Syria and Kuwait and Iran. And he obviously has real respect for the Nabataeans.
18:16He says, I looked upon them with pleasure, but he also tells us that theirs was a land of thirst and a place of parching.
18:27Two authors, writing 600 years later, were fascinated by the Nabataeans.
18:32Strabo, a Greek, recorded their customs and society in his Geographica around 17 CE.
18:39And the writer of a world history, Diodorus Siculus, described Nabataean life around the same time.
18:46He says that like other Arabian tribes, they lived in the desert, but they far surpassed the others in their wealth.
18:55There is clearly just something special going on with the Nabataeans.
19:00So you have to wonder, what is the secret of their success?
19:10I'm off to find another archaeology colleague who thinks she might have some answers.
19:15It's someone who's as passionate about exploring ancient cultures.
19:19I am, and she's an old friend.
19:21It's Hassa. Hi.
19:22How are you?
19:23Oh, so well, so lovely to see you.
19:25Good to see you. Really good.
19:33Hassa's story with Hegra started early, visiting her grandmother's farm nearby.
19:38I think he's saying that you used to come and play here when you were a kid.
19:43Is that right?
19:44Yes. So I used to come climb up the mountains, discover everything.
19:48So I've always been fascinated.
19:50And this is one of the reasons, you know, that drove me to study archaeology.
19:55She's agreed to show me artifacts from Hegra,
19:58which might help explain the Nabataeans' startling economic success.
20:03And something Nabataeans are very famous for is their pottery.
20:08Yes.
20:09And it's very famous because they called it Akshal, because it's so thin,
20:14and no one perfected pottery this thin, such as the Nabataeans.
20:18Yeah.
20:18Which is very beautiful to see.
20:21So you said that, that just tells me as well that beauty really matters to them.
20:26A picture slowly coming into focus of a highly developed culture,
20:31underpinned by a vibrant economy.
20:36And there was a surprise object found here.
20:40This coin is for Cleopatra.
20:45So that's so cool. So that's, you know, pharaoh Cleopatra, Queen Cleopatra,
20:50Cleopatra the Great, some people call her, you know, she was like,
20:53she's one of the most famous women of all time, let alone of the ancient world.
20:58So the people who were here, they knew about Egypt, they traded with them.
21:02You know, Cleopatra, like she's a household name for us,
21:05she would have been a household name for them too.
21:07Exactly. And this shows you, you know, how people were really connected.
21:11We always assume before people were not connected because there's no planes,
21:16there's no cars. It would take you maybe months to reach Egypt or less,
21:19but they were connected and they knew about each other.
21:21Yeah. And they traded with each other.
21:26All this because the Nabataean Kingdom was at a crucial intersection of trade routes,
21:32a network of great cities in Egypt, Greece and Rome.
21:37A web that extended to the markets of India and most importantly,
21:42accessed incense from Southern Arabia.
21:45Of course, we've all heard of the three wise men bringing the baby Jesus, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
21:55But incense was also really important to ancient Egyptians.
21:59So they used frankincense in mummification.
22:03And you know, their beautiful coal rimmed eyes,
22:06that was often done with burnt frankincense wood,
22:09which, by the way, also acts as an insecticide.
22:14And the famous boy king Tutankhamun even had frankincense balls buried with him in his tomb.
22:23The Egyptians adored it so much, they called it Sweat of the Gods.
22:31The Nabataeans traded it west to Greeks and Romans and right across the ancient Middle East.
22:37Their virtual monopoly on the frankincense trade was secure by the third century BCE.
22:46It even reached as far away as the Han dynasty in China.
22:53But they didn't only dominate the frankincense trade.
22:57They also grew rich as the kings of a trade of an even rarer commodity.
23:02The petrochemical of antiquity thing called bitumen.
23:10The Greek historian Diodorus tells us a story of the epic battle for control of bitumen supplies.
23:17A conflict that played a pivotal role in the rise of the Nabataeans.
23:22It takes place 300 years earlier, around 312 BCE.
23:27Bitumen occurs naturally, bubbling up out of earth and water in particularly huge quantities in the Dead Sea.
23:38Back in the 4th century BCE, when the Nabataean kingdom was just starting out,
23:43the Dead Sea fell inside their borders, giving them control of a product that everyone wanted.
23:50Bitumen is incredibly useful.
23:57It can be used for lighting, for fuel as a building material, and crucially for the waterproofing of cisterns and drains and the hulls of boats.
24:09So, by having monopoly of this trade, the Nabataeans were becoming spectacularly rich.
24:16But if there's one thing that history teaches you, it's that jewels often attract thieves.
24:25In this case, Alexander the Great, and on his death, those who followed him.
24:32A Greek Macedonian general, one of the successors to Alexander the Great's empire,
24:40sent a crack squad from Syria to seize the bitumen supply of the Dead Sea.
24:46We're told that the Nabataeans responded by mounting on reed rafts and raining arrows down on their enemy.
24:53It was a battle that became legendary and is possibly the world's first petrochemical conflict.
25:07The defeat of the armies of Greece in 312 BCE meant that the Nabataeans were here to stay
25:15and they used their wealth to found a civilisation that would flourish for the next 400 years.
25:23My quest to find the origins of the Nabataeans has brought me to a place called
25:30Ung Daraj in Alullah, north-west Saudi Arabia.
25:38Because so many of the traces of the past here are hidden or really difficult to access,
25:43archaeologists have been taken to the skies to try to map what's going on and I've got a chance to join them.
25:53Great! Good luck!
25:59Archaeologist Wissam Khalil is on an aerial survey to investigate the region.
26:08Wissam and his colleagues have found clues that help piece together the story of the Nabataean Kingdom's expansion.
26:14Ung Daraj is a mysterious rock formation about 20 kilometres from the city of Hegra and these days,
26:23completely inaccessible.
26:28Well, this is the place. This is Ung Daraj. We're on top of it.
26:31The cliff, over 900 feet high, is pockmarked with thousands of steps.
26:37The name Ung Daraj, some say, means Mother of the Stairs.
26:42So there are some stairs, but some of it's like a sheer rock base.
26:46Yes, this is amazing.
26:49Amazing.
26:50Archaeologists believe that the steps once led to an ancient place of ritual.
26:57You're so close to the sky and the sun and up in the mountains.
27:01It's got to be something to do with kind of worshipping or appreciating the gods of the landscape up here.
27:07This entry was a site of worship for a civilisation that predates the Nabataeans here,
27:13a people called the Dadanites.
27:16Are they leaving anything up here as kind of offerings?
27:19Yes, exactly. Those offerings, we're talking about thousands of fragments of offerings.
27:25They were found here and hundreds and hundreds of statues.
27:28It's so cool up here.
27:30I mean, I've read about this place. I've heard about Dadan.
27:39Back down on the ground, Wissam guides me to the heart of the ancient city of Dadan,
27:44on the other side of the Fertile Valley, south of the Nabataean city of Hegra.
27:50The city was the capital of two civilisations, called the Dadanites and Leonites,
27:56and Wissam believes it's packed with evidence that they were forerunners of the Nabataeans.
28:06So hundreds of these statues were found on the sanctuary of Umdaraj.
28:12And this is a torso, this is a fragment of a statue.
28:16The head wasn't here and then the legs were also destroyed.
28:19So people are carrying these up from their home. It's such an effort to get up there,
28:27that it must really have meant something significant to the women and men of the Dadan.
28:37Look at this extraordinary face.
28:40You sure this is okay?
28:41Yeah, of course.
28:44Beautiful.
28:44So beautiful. And so meaningful. There's a kind of serenity to it. It seems very tranquil in some ways.
28:53It's extraordinary. And it's worth just taking a moment, isn't it? Because this is how old? 2,400 years old?
29:00Yes, exactly.
29:01I can't tell you that my heart is beating very fast. It's such an honour to hold this and just to imagine
29:08what this would have meant to the people who lived here.
29:10Exactly. Every single object has a story behind that we don't know. There's some mystery behind.
29:15There is.
29:20The city and culture of Dadan was, like the later Nabataean Empire, built with wealth,
29:27made from that trade and incense from southern Arabia.
29:30It was famous, in a way, through the Bible.
29:36Yeah. Well, that's right, because Dadan, you hear about that in the Old Testament.
29:40Yes. So, both Ezekiel and Isaiah mentioned Dadan as a city trading with the East, trading with the
29:49East Mediterranean, specifically with the coastal city of Tyre in today's Lebanon. So, incense, spices,
29:56is Dadan gained its power, gained its richness through its merchants.
30:02The Book of Isaiah says the Dadanites camped with camel caravans in the thickets of Arabia.
30:08And in Ezekiel, they're described as traders of ebony, ivory and fine saddlecloths.
30:14They're also winning out when it comes to the landscape. Because when you walk through here,
30:20there's that massive cistern, incredible cistern, that looks like it's carved out of a single
30:25block of stone. They're economically successful and they're also managing to kind of
30:30win the battle with the environment here. They understand nature.
30:36The people of Dadan built their incense trading empire from the 6th century BCE.
30:42And then, in the first century, new adventurers arrived, hungry for a piece of the action and
30:50ready to build their own trading centre at nearby Hegra. The Nabataeans.
30:58Do you think the Dadanites and Dadan inspired the Nabataeans?
31:02Yes. So, both are North Arabian kingdoms, both spoke similar, similar languages,
31:12and both shared knowledge about the desert, about the trade, about nature.
31:19By the end of the 1st century BCE, the Nabataeans had taken over trade routes and the regional
31:25economy from the Dadanites. I mean, it's such an important lesson that, isn't it? That the thread
31:32of history never snaps, that it's always one culture passing the baton onto the next.
31:39But at the same time, it feels to me as though the Nabataeans are doing things a little differently,
31:45acting in a way that was quietly radical.
31:48The Nabataeans aren't carving out an empire in the same way as the other superpowers of the day.
31:56So, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Persians.
32:01They're not building masses of huge cities. They're not enslaving entire populations.
32:08For them, what matters are roads and routes and communications.
32:14It's being on the trail of something that's really important.
32:20In the next leg of my journey, I'm going to head out into the desert,
32:24experiencing life on the trade routes where the Nabataeans built their success.
32:30I'm preparing for a journey south of Hegra.
32:37Searching for the truth of the Nabataeans' origins.
32:42If I was giving a tip off, it was worth coming here.
32:45And apart from this being the most enormous mountain, I think,
32:49I think I can see something incredible up there. Hang on.
32:51This place is now called Wadi al-Nam and I've asked Bada and Ellie from my team to send up their drones
33:01to investigate what looks like ancient art high on the rock face.
33:13Wadi al-Nam offers evidence the ecology of this region was very different thousands of years ago.
33:18So this is like a kind of postcard from the past.
33:25Wadi al-Nam offers evidence of this region.
33:27These incredible ancient artworks, which the Nabataeans would have witnessed,
33:32reveal a more fertile kind of landscape.
33:34You've got those huge herds of ostriches, giant oxen, giant cows.
33:45And we know that there were leopards here.
33:48I mean, this would have been a landscape just teeming with wildlife.
33:54It's spectacular, Ellie. I've not, honestly, I've never seen rock art like this.
33:58This is incredible.
34:02The carvings at Wadi al-Nam suggest to me that the people who carved them
34:07must have had a productive relationship with the natural world.
34:18If I'm going to try to understand the Nabataean world from their point of view,
34:27then I need to appreciate and understand the landscape that they thrived in.
34:32So I'm leaving Hegra, I'm going to head out to the desert,
34:37and I'm planning to experience it and stay there.
34:40On my way, I've stopped at the oasis of Alullah
34:48to meet someone who's promised to introduce me to local Bedouins.
34:55Our people with an unparalleled knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula are the Bedouin.
35:00The name almost certainly comes from Bedou, which means a desert dweller.
35:04And I've spent time with them before, and there's a contact here
35:08who's invited me to join a camel caravan that's passing through.
35:16Ahmed al-Nam's family traces its heritage back at least five centuries in this region.
35:23My mother actually grow somewhere there, not far from here, the third garden from here.
35:29Oh, you get to see her house?
35:31Yeah, yeah, of course.
35:32Oh, beautiful.
35:33So the history is alive here?
35:35Yeah, the tribes are the same.
35:38We changed the civilisation name, but still the people are here.
35:42Yeah, amazing.
35:43The people have stayed and the memories have stayed.
35:46Yeah, true.
35:52We're travelling the next stage of our journey on foot.
35:54Our cars will meet us tomorrow morning.
36:02I hope.
36:08Ahmed knows the perfect contact to act as our guide.
36:13His tribe have been travelling here around this region for thousands of years.
36:18Yes.
36:19And look at that site.
36:20So this is a site that has also been happening here for thousands of years.
36:23Of course, yeah.
36:26I've always been impressed by Bedouin culture,
36:29their incredible ability to survive in the desert with the help of their prized camels.
36:34This is Khalaf al-Nizi.
36:38He's from the Niza tribe who have been here for thousands of years.
36:42Very good.
36:43Thank you, Salaam.
36:44Lovely to meet you.
36:44I'm Bethany.
36:45Where are you from?
36:46London.
36:46Mashallah.
36:47Mashallah.
36:48Mashallah.
36:49You have the most beautiful camels.
36:51He said anytime you come to Saudi Arabia,
37:04he will give you one camel just to travel anywhere you want.
37:06Shukran.
37:08Good.
37:08Shukran.
37:09That's...
37:10I mean, I've got a camel.
37:11He said this is the most quiet camel.
37:13Uh-huh.
37:14Yeah.
37:15Quietish.
37:16So, yeah, he trusts this camel.
37:18And this is the one I could travel on through Arabia.
37:30The ancient writers, Diodorus and Strabo, both praised Nabataean's skill with camels.
37:36Strabo noted,
37:38camels afford the service they require instead of horses.
37:42It was camels that allowed the Nabataeans to control the thousands of miles of trade routes
37:47that spread out across the Arabian Peninsula.
37:54If you do a big journey, how far can you travel?
37:57How far can you go with the camels?
37:58The camels are running from 40 to 50 kilos.
38:08Running, it can be 100 kilometres or more daily.
38:11Greek daily?
38:12Yeah.
38:13I know from the Nabataeans in the past, they used everything in the camel.
38:18They used the skin, the fire, the wool, the milk, even the bones for writing on.
38:24Is that still the same today?
38:26With the Bedouins, the Bedouins are still using the same techniques, the same use for the camels.
38:32But you're still carrying on those traditions that were here in history, 2,300 years ago.
38:39Yeah.
38:55You can always depend on a camel in the desert.
38:58Of course, water supply is a huge issue in the desert.
39:20And authors wrote about this for the Nabataeans, saying that they lived in a wilderness, claiming it as their native land,
39:26which had neither rivers nor abundant springs.
39:30But the Nabataeans have got it totally sorted, so they would leave secret markers for one another,
39:37where there was water under the earth.
39:38And archaeologists are finding whole systems of wells and systems.
39:47As night falls, it's time to set up camp.
39:50It's cold here at night, so the priority is to get a fire going.
40:05Do you hear the stories about what it was like for your ancestors here?
40:10Would they ever navigate by the stars?
40:28Just thinking about the Nabataeans and their relationship to the desert.
40:46Because you spend so long travelling through this landscape,
40:50I imagine it must give you a great respect for the desert.
41:10Travelling in the desert, remove any fear he had.
41:14He learned of the leadership skills from this desert.
41:19So interesting that, because when you get to know the Nabataeans,
41:23they do seem very confident.
41:25They have this real sort of confidence about them.
41:27And that's exactly what you, Abifat, is saying.
41:30Yeah, well again, that's what they said about the Nabataeans.
41:48They said that they were a people who loved liberty and who loved happiness.
41:52True.
41:53Yeah, I can say he's one of the Nabataeans, for sure.
41:57Waking up here, you realise how the Nabataeans must have measured themselves up,
42:04not against other civilisations, but this awesome landscape.
42:13Have a safe trip.
42:13I will, thank you for looking after me.
42:16Goodbye.
42:17So I leave my new friends and take with me a deeper understanding of the Nabataeans' relationship
42:24with not just the natural world, but also the celestial world of the stars, the sun and the sky.
42:41It reminds me of a very special place right in the heart of Hegra.
42:47So this is called The Sanctuary.
42:57And what happened up here really helps to explain the Nabataean world view.
43:04And it's an awesome view.
43:05I've not been up here before.
43:06Wow, what a vantage point, look.
43:09Ah, you're actually on top of the world up here.
43:11So from here you'd have been able to see the entire city and all of the tombs all around.
43:18So on this rock you're literally right at the centre of things.
43:29This giant rock, surveying the residential area of the city,
43:33was home to the main site of ritual worship for the Nabataeans who lived here.
43:38It's just great to find this temple up here because our old friend Strabo tells us that the
43:46Nabataeans worshipped the god of the sun and they built altars up on the tops of their homes
43:52and every day made libations and burnt frankincense to him.
43:57And wait for it, archaeologists discovered an incense burner right up here.
44:03There's evidence in the layout of the ancient city that the Nabataeans built Hegra
44:10centred on a solar belief system with the sun god Dushara at its heart.
44:17And archaeologists are working on a thesis right now but most of the very impressive tombs
44:23are orientated directly either towards the rising or the setting sun.
44:36Okay so I'm standing right in the middle of the temple and these bases here represent the original
44:42columns or pillars and if I get out my compass it reveals something very very cool.
44:49So these two here are facing east towards the rising sun and these are orientated west where the sun sets
44:59so the sun would have set directly between these two pillars exactly as it is now.
45:20On my journey so far I've learned so much about the Nabataeans from the unique brand new evidence
45:26being uncovered here.
45:34And the adventure continues. Next I'm heading out of Hegra to explore the far corners of the Nabataeans
45:41trading empire. Maybe that's where I will unlock the ultimate secrets of their extraordinary story.
45:50This is them reaching out to us across 2,000 years.
45:57And what they did, what they pioneered would shape ancient history itself.
46:02And we look forward to that here next Saturday at eight o'clock. Tomorrow night a fortress of time and
46:16its fight for the future. The seven-year restoration of Norwich Castle rebuilding history at 7.30.
46:22Next Griff's finding his groove in Memphis, his great American self.
46:39To be continued...
46:44Ms.
46:46of Mapa
46:48of Mapa
46:51of Mapa
46:53of Mapa
46:54Santos
46:55of Mapa
46:56of Mapa
46:57of Mapa
46:58of Mapa
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