- 2 days ago
Bettany Hughes' Lost Worlds - The Nabataeans (2025) S01 E0 1
#CrimeTV
🎞 Please join our official group to watch the full series for free, as quickly as possible.
***************----------***************
👉 Tele: https://t.me/CinemaSeriesUSFilm
👉 Official Channel: https://dailymotion.com/crimetv
👉 Group Facebook:
#CrimeTV
🎞 Please join our official group to watch the full series for free, as quickly as possible.
***************----------***************
👉 Tele: https://t.me/CinemaSeriesUSFilm
👉 Official Channel: https://dailymotion.com/crimetv
👉 Group Facebook:
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00This is a truly extraordinary place, which, at last, is revealing its secrets.
00:19A place of legend and wonder. A lost city carved into these rocks that was home to one of the ancient world's most enigmatic and influential civilisations.
00:43A nomadic tribe called the Nabataeans, who burst out of the deserts of Arabia, built a vast trading empire spanning continents, and then seemingly disappeared from the history books.
01:00Here's a story that has to be told.
01:05I'm hitting the road in a once-in-a-lifetime journey across the ancient world.
01:15An epic quest, from the historic settlements of Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia, and the wonder of Petra in Jordan,
01:30to Greek islands like Kos, and the Bay of Naples in Italy.
01:40With a network of world-class researchers, we'll be analysing brand new evidence.
01:46Look at this!
01:48Testing exciting theories.
01:51Revealing new finds.
01:54You're making history, McKaylee.
01:56You're discovering here.
01:58And exploring uncharted territory.
02:01You 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.
02:15I'm going to rediscover this overlooked culture, reveal how it still shapes our world, and try to 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.
02:38These geniuses of history, who called themselves the Nabataean, are the key to a lost world.
02:53Okay, so first I'm on a journey to try to uncover the origins of their story, and to ask a really fundamental question.
03:12Who exactly were the Nabataeans?
03:16Travelling this region for 30 years, I've come across traces of this long-forgotten civilisation, who were the architects of awe-inspiring Petra.
03:29And on this adventure, I'm going to track their impact across the centuries, revealing the Nabataeans as a missing link in the story of the ancient world.
03:42To show we can't understand classical history without them.
03:46And this is a sensational place to start. It's the ancient city of Hegra in northwest Saudi Arabia, and I'm discovering it for the first time.
03:59I'm starting my investigation here, because Hegra is only now being fully explored.
04:10This UNESCO World Heritage Site is a frontline for research, and for ground-breaking discoveries about Nabataean civilisation.
04:21This city was the southern trading hub of a massive, rich kingdom.
04:30Its capital, Petra, close on 500 kilometres to the north, with influence and connections that stretched from the deserts of Arabia to modern-day Egypt,
04:40and key sites like the ancient port 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.
05:06And the kingdom of Judea was home to John the Baptist, Herod the Great, whose mother was Nabataean, by the way, and of course, Jesus.
05:23I'm investigating Hegra, looking for clues that explain the extraordinary rise of the city at this crucial moment of history.
05:31And 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 jewel.
05:46I'm researching here, so I've got special access to go up to the top.
05:49This 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 site.
06:09So I've climbed up here to get a Nabataean eye view, because this is what the workers who built 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 settlement.
06:35Hardly any of it has been excavated yet.
06:38So there are so many secrets here just waiting to be discovered.
06:43Hegra is a hive of activity because it's rare to access this range of brand new archaeology.
07:02My tech team gets to work scanning and recording, joining teams from around the world.
07:09Like conservation specialists, Estia racing to preserve the tombs.
07:15This is actually pretty incredible.
07:17Archaeologists hunting for lost artefacts.
07:20I mean, so 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.
07:29Yeah.
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's an entire city under here.
07:42Yeah.
07:44All determined to uncover the secrets of Hegra.
07:48A team, headed by Jan Franke and Katja Schurler, have discovered evidence of a packed urban network.
07:58This is Pompeii of the Nabataeans, right?
08:02And it's all there for us to discover.
08:09Using the latest 3D scanning and visual effects, we're going to reconstruct Hegra.
08:15In the first century CE, it was the second biggest city in the Nabataean Kingdom after Petra, a busy, densely populated, walled settlement.
08:26I want to find out how it grew and thrived in the desert, powered by the Nabataeans' unique attitude to life.
08:34Whenever the Nabataeans want to do something very important...
08:38Leila Naime directed excavations at Hegra, and is one of the world's leading authorities on the Nabataeans.
08:46I'm keen to show her the model and get her take on exactly what we're discovering.
08:54So I'd love it if you can help me, because I find it a bit hard to get my head round the layouts 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.
09:16Like sort of watchtowers?
09:18Yeah, watchtowers, or just places where, for instance, if there was an attack, they would just put some archers...
09:23Yeah. ...on sort of platform, and so 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 high.
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.
09:49That's a lot.
09:50Well, it'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 asking.
10:02I 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.
10:11I mean, that's one of the things that's so exciting about this place and this study, is that there is so much more to discover.
10:17You know, all these little bits of the jigsaw puzzle of evidence is slowly coming into a full picture.
10:23And this wasn't just a city of the living.
10:26It was a city of the dead.
10:28Hegra's most striking survivors are over 100 monumental tombs, many once richly decorated.
10:38The city is in the middle, and all the tombs are built or cut in the sandstone outcrops around the city.
10:47And is that, is the visibility important?
10:50The notables, those who had these beautiful tombs built, they wanted everyone to know that they were rich enough to have a tomb as large, as decorated, as magnificent as possible.
11:03And so the largest tomb, 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 on those tombs.
11:14Some of them look like they were made yesterday.
11:17It is true. And one can even see very precisely the traces left by the tools which the stone cutters used to cut the tombs.
11:27And that's it. And just with those details, they start to live again.
11:30Most 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.
11:43The top of a carved doorway.
11:47Inside the lost tomb were touching human remains, the first ever found here.
11:53Leading the project to analyse pre-Islamic remains here is forensic anthropologist Lauren Swift.
12:07Lauren and her team have spent months cataloguing what they believe to be the remains of 70 individuals.
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.
12:28And it's not something that really comes along that often.
12:31We're hopeful that we can get some ADNA, some ancient DNA.
12:35So then we can say, were the people in these tombs related and how were they related?
12:39Are they men or women? Are they children? Are they old?
12:41Do they have pathologies? Do they have trauma that they lived with?
12:46You can do a lot of work on teeth, can't you?
12:48And that tells you age, but also what people's lifestyle was like, where they're from, what they're eating.
12:53Yeah, exactly. So if we have this mandible as an example,
12:56so you can see that we've got some of the molars at the back and they're really good.
13:01And this, I mean, really interesting, they're quite ground down, those teeth.
13:05You're living in a sandy, gritty environment, it gets into the food, it grinds down the teeth.
13:09You 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.
13:28This 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 in that you can see.
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 they?
13:45But look at that, that's incredible, that level of preservation is astonishing.
13:51The evidence has reminded me that this once forgotten kingdom
13:56was a product of the decisions, ambitions and dreams of real people.
14:01And that this journey is ultimately a quest to really appreciate them.
14:16There's another place in Hegra I've been told I just have to check out
14:20if I want to understand what made the Nabataeans tick.
14:23Jabal Ithlib is a natural amphitheatre of towering rock formations outside the city walls.
14:38This was a sacred place, not just for the people of Hegra.
14:44If you look at the rock faces themselves, a lot of these holes aren't natural.
14:48They're human-made.
14:49So there are niches where the Nabataeans would have worshipped their gods.
14:54And we know that they even encourage visitors to pay respect to their own divinities here.
15:03The inhabitants of Hegra mingled here with outsiders,
15:07like visiting traders, bringing cargo to and from the city.
15:11You can just imagine people coming here in its heyday, can't you, and being really transported by the experience.
15:23And we don't know yet whether it was just the elite who were allowed here or everybody,
15:27but whoever inhabited this incredible space, they'd have been quenching their thirst with water and making offerings to their gods.
15:36And because they came from right across the region, they'd have been exchanging news and ideas.
15:41The sanctuary of Jabal Ithlib is connected to the rest of the city by this spectacular narrow canyon.
15:54So this is the Seek, the word means a chasm or a gorge, and it's leading me somewhere that was clearly super significant for the Nabataeans.
16:07Between the end of the Seek and the city walls is this incredible space, carved into the rock by millions of chisel blows.
16:21It offers more clues to the thriving cosmopolitan nature of Hegra 2,000 years ago.
16:28This is so impressive, isn't it?
16:31So this is a place that is now known as the Diwan, which means a kind of meeting place or an assembly.
16:40But in the ancient world, places like this were called triclinia, which is actually a Latin word with Greek origins that meant a three-sided banqueting hall.
16:51So the Nabataeans we know would have come here and had these very formal banquets that almost had a kind of ritual tinge to them.
16:59Triclinia had been made famous by Roman banquet scenes, but actually may have originated in the East.
17:12So when they came here, they would have eaten and they would have done business, but there would have been a kind of sacred gloss to the things that happened here.
17:23And that makes sense for two reasons. One is that for the Nabataeans, commerce and money making, you feel almost was a kind of religious experience.
17:36This was what really mattered to them. And at this time in the ancient world, there just isn't a stark division between religion and everyday life.
17:44This was a landscape that was thick with gods and spirits and demigods and possibility.
17:53The historical record shows that there were visitors to what could have been Nabataean territory as far back as the 7th century BCE.
18:05This is from the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, and the Assyrian kingdom was centred on Iraq at the time.
18:18It's sort of Iraq and Syria and Kuwait and Iran. And he obviously has real respect for the Nabataeans.
18:23I looked upon them with pleasure, but he also tells us that theirs was a land of thirst and a place of parching.
18:33Two authors, writing 600 years later, were fascinated by the Nabataeans.
18:39Strabo, a Greek, recorded their customs and society in his Geographica around 17 CE.
18:46And the writer of a world history, Diodorus Siculus, described Nabataean life around the same time.
18:51He says that like other Arabian tribes, they lived in the desert, but they far surpassed the others in their wealth.
19:02There is clearly just something special going on with the Nabataeans.
19:06So 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.
19:22It's someone who's as passionate about exploring ancient cultures.
19:25I am, and she's an old friend. It's Hasse.
19:28Hi. How are you?
19:29Oh, so well, so lovely to see you.
19:31Really good.
19:39Hasse's story with Hegra started early, visiting her grandmother's farm nearby.
19:44I think he's saying that you used to come and play here when you were a kid, is that right?
19:49Yes.
19:50So I used to come, climb up the mountains, discover everything.
19:54So I've always been fascinated, and this is one of the reasons, you know, that drove me to study archaeology.
19:59She's agreed to show me artefacts from Hegra, which might help explain the Nabataeans' startling economic success.
20:09There's something Nabataeans are very famous for.
20:12Yeah.
20:13Is their pottery.
20:14Yes.
20:15And it's very famous because they called it akshal, because it's so thin, and no one perfected pottery this thin, such as the Nabataeans.
20:24Yeah.
20:25Which is very beautiful to see.
20:26So you said that, that just tells me as well that beauty really matters to them.
20:32A picture slowly coming into focus of a highly developed culture, underpinned by a vibrant economy.
20:42And there was a surprise object found here.
20:46This coin is for Cleopatra.
20:51So that's so cool.
20:52So that's, you know, Pharaoh, Cleopatra, Queen Cleopatra, Cleopatra the Great, some people call her.
20:58You know, she was like, she's one of the most famous women of all time, let alone of the ancient world.
21:04So the people who were here, they knew about Egypt, they traded with them.
21:08You know, Cleopatra, like she's a household name for us, she would have been a household name for them too.
21:13I see.
21:14Exactly.
21:15And this shows you, you know, how people were really connected.
21:17We always assume, before people were not connected, because there's no planes, there's no cars.
21:22It would take you maybe months to reach Egypt or less, but they were connected and they knew about each other.
21:27Yeah.
21:28And they traded with each other.
21:29All this because the Nabataean Kingdom was at a crucial intersection of trade routes.
21:37A network of great cities in Egypt, Greece and Rome.
21:42A web that extended to the markets of India and most importantly, accessed incense from southern Arabia.
21:53Of course, we've all heard of the three wise men bringing the baby Jesus, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
22:01But incense was also really important to ancient Egyptians.
22:05So they used frankincense in mummification.
22:09And you know their beautiful coal-rimmed eyes?
22:12That was often done with burnt frankincense wood.
22:16Which, by the way, also acts as an insecticide.
22:20And the famous boy king Tutankhamun even had frankincense balls buried with him in his tomb.
22:29The Egyptians adored it so much, they called it Sweat of the Gods.
22:34The Nabataeans traded it west to Greeks and Romans and right across the ancient Middle East.
22:43Their virtual monopoly on the frankincense trade was secure by the 3rd century BCE.
22:49It even reached as far away as the Han dynasty in China.
22:59But they didn't only dominate the frankincense trade.
23:02They also grew rich as the kings of a trade of an even rarer commodity.
23:08The petrochemical of antiquity thing called bitumen.
23:15The Greek historian Diodorus tells us a story of the epic battle for control of bitumen supplies.
23:23A conflict that played a pivotal role in the rise of the Nabataeans.
23:27It takes place 300 years earlier, around 312 BCE.
23:34Bitumen occurs naturally, bubbling up out of earth and water in particularly huge quantities in the Dead Sea.
23:44Back in the 4th century BCE, when the Nabataean kingdom was just starting out,
23:49the Dead Sea fell inside their borders, giving them control of a product that everyone wanted.
23:59Bitumen is incredibly useful.
24:02It can be used for lighting, for fuel as a building material,
24:08and crucially for the waterproofing of cisterns and drains and the hulls of boats.
24:15So, by having monopoly of this trade, the Nabataeans were becoming spectacularly rich.
24:21But if there's one thing that history teaches you, it's that jewels often attract thieves.
24:29In this case, Alexander the Great, and on his death, those who followed him.
24:40A Greek Macedonian general, one of the successors to Alexander the Great's empire,
24:46sent a crack squad from Syria to seize the bitumen supply of the Dead Sea.
24:52We're told that the Nabataeans responded by mounting on reed rafts and raining arrows down on their enemy.
25:00It was a battle that became legendary and is possibly the world's first petrochemical conflict.
25:13The defeat of the armies of Greece in 312 BCE meant that the Nabataeans were here to stay
25:21and they used their wealth to found a civilisation that would flourish for the next 400 years.
25:37My quest to find the origins of the Nabataeans has brought me to a place called Umdaraj in Alullah,
25:44north-west Saudi Arabia.
25:46Because so many of the traces of the past here are hidden or really difficult to access,
25:53archaeologists have been taken to the skies to try to map what's going on
25:58and I've got a chance to join them.
26:00Archaeologist Wissam Khalil is on an aerial survey to investigate the region.
26:19Wissam and his colleagues have found clues that help piece together the story of the Nabataean Kingdom's expansion.
26:25Umdaraj is a mysterious rock formation about 20 kilometres from the city of Hegra and these days completely inaccessible.
26:40This is the place, this is Umdaraj. We're on top of it.
26:42The cliff, over 900 feet high, is pockmarked with thousands of steps.
26:49The name Umdaraj, some say, means Mother of the Stairs.
26:53So there are some stairs, but some bits like a sheer rock face.
26:58This is amazing.
27:00Amazing.
27:02Archaeologists believe that the steps once led to an ancient place of ritual.
27:08You're so close to the sky and the sun and up in the mountains.
27:12It's got to be something to do with kind of worshipping or appreciating the gods of the landscape up here.
27:18This entry was a site of worship for a civilisation that predates the Nabataeans here.
27:24A people called the Dadanites.
27:26Are they leaving anything up here as kind of offerings?
27:30Yes, exactly. Those offerings. We're talking about thousands of fragments of offerings.
27:37They were found here and hundreds and hundreds of statues.
27:40It's so cool up here.
27:41I mean, I've read about this place. I've heard about Dadan.
27:50Back down on the ground, Wissam guides me to the heart of the ancient city of Dadan,
27:56on the other side of the fertile valley, south of the Nabataean city of Hegra.
28:01The city was the capital of two civilisations, called the Dadanites and Leonites.
28:07And Wissam believes it's packed with evidence that they were forerunners of the Nabataeans.
28:16So hundreds of these statues were found on the sanctuary of Umdaraj.
28:22And this is a torso, this is a fragment of a statue.
28:27The head was in here and then the legs were also destroyed.
28:31So people are carrying these up from their home.
28:35It's such an effort to get up there that it must really have meant something significant to the women and men of the Dadan.
28:44Oh.
28:48Look at this extraordinary face.
28:52You sure it's okay? Yeah, of course.
28:54Beautiful.
28:55Beautiful.
28:56So beautiful.
28:58And so meaningful.
29:00There's a kind of serenity to it. It seems very tranquil in some ways.
29:04It's extraordinary.
29:06And it's worth just taking a moment, isn't it? Because this is how old? 2,400 years old?
29:12Yes, exactly.
29:13I can't tell you that my heart is beating very fast. It's such an honour to hold this and just to imagine what this would have meant to the people who lived here.
29:22Exactly. Every single object has a story behind that we don't know. There's some mystery behind.
29:26There is.
29:27The city and culture of Dadan was, like the later Nabataean Empire, built with wealth, made from that trade and incense from southern Arabia.
29:42It was famous, in a way, through the Bible.
29:48Yeah. Well, that's right, because Dadan, you hear about that in the Old Testament.
29:52Yes. So, both Ezekiel and Isaiah mentioned Dadan as a city trading with the East, trading with the East Mediterranean, specifically with the coastal city of Tyre in today's Lebanon.
30:04So, incense, spices. Dadan gained its power, gained its richness through its merchants.
30:13The Book of Isaiah says the Dadanites camped with camel caravans in the thickets of Arabia.
30:20And in Ezekiel, they're described as traders of ebony, ivory and fine saddle cloths.
30:26They're also winning out when it comes to the landscape.
30:30Because when you walk through here, there's that massive cistern, incredible cistern, that looks like it's carved out of a single block of stone.
30:38They're economically successful and they're also managing to kind of win the battle with the environment here.
30:44They understand nature.
30:45The people of Dadan built their incense trading empire from the 6th century BCE.
30:53And then, in the 1st century, new adventurers arrived, hungry for a piece of the action and ready to build their own trading centre at nearby Hegra.
31:06The Nabataeans.
31:08Do you think the Dadanites and Dadan inspired the Nabataeans?
31:14Yes. So, both are North Arabian kingdoms.
31:18Both spoke similar languages and both shared knowledge about the desert, about the trade, about nature.
31:28By the end of the 1st century BCE, the Nabataeans had taken over trade routes and the regional economy from the Dadanites.
31:38I mean, it's such an important lesson that, isn't it? That the thread of history never snaps.
31:45That it's always one culture passing the baton on to the next.
31:48But at the same time, it feels to me as though the Nabataeans are doing things a little differently, acting in a way that was quietly radical.
32:00The Nabataeans aren't carving out an empire in the same way as the other superpowers of the day.
32:07So, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Persians.
32:11They're not building masses of huge cities. They're not enslaving entire populations.
32:19For them, what matters are roads and routes and communications.
32:25It's being on the trail of something that's really important.
32:29In the next leg of my journey, I'm going to head out into the desert, experiencing life on the trade routes where the Nabataeans built their success.
32:48I'm preparing for a journey south of Hegra.
32:54Searching for the truth of the Nabataeans' origins.
32:57If I was giving it a tip off, it was worth coming here.
33:01And apart from this being the most enormous mountain, I think, I think I can see something incredible up there. Hang on.
33:10This place is now called Wadi al-Nam.
33:13And I've asked Bada and Ellie from my team to send up their drones to investigate what looks like ancient art high on the rock face.
33:27Wadi al-Nam offers evidence the ecology of this region was very different thousands of years ago.
33:35So this is like a kind of postcard from the past.
33:41These incredible ancient artworks, which the Nabataeans would have witnessed, reveal a more fertile kind of landscape.
33:50You've got those huge herds of ostriches, giant oxen, giant cows, and we know that there were leopards here.
34:04I mean, this would have been a landscape just teeming with wildlife.
34:10It's spectacular, Ellie. I've not, honestly, I've never seen rock art like this.
34:14This is incredible.
34:16The carvings at Wadi al-Nam suggest to me that the people who carve them must have had a productive relationship with the natural world.
34:26If I'm going to try to understand the Nabataean world from their point of view, then I need to appreciate and understand the landscape that they thrived in.
34:48So I'm leaving Hegra. I'm going to head out to the desert and I'm planning to experience it and stay there.
35:00On my way, I've stopped at the oasis of Al-Ula to meet someone who's promised to introduce me to local Bedouins.
35:08A people with an unparalleled knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula are the Bedouin.
35:16The name almost certainly comes from Bedou, which means a desert dweller.
35:20And I've spent time with them before and there's a contact here who's invited me to join a camel caravan that's passing through.
35:27Ahmed al-Nam's family traces its heritage back at least five centuries in this region.
35:39My mother actually grow somewhere there, not far from here, the third garden from here.
35:46Oh, you can just see her house?
35:47Yeah, yeah, of course.
35:48Oh, beautiful.
35:49So the history is alive here?
35:51Yeah, two tribes are the same.
35:54We changed the civilisation name, but still the people are here.
35:59Yeah, amazing.
36:00The people have stayed and the memories have stayed.
36:03Yeah, true.
36:08We're travelling the next stage of our journey on foot.
36:15Our cars will meet us tomorrow morning.
36:19I hope.
36:24Ahmed knows the perfect contact to act as our guide.
36:29His tribe have been travelling here around this region for thousands of years.
36:34Yes.
36:35And look at that site.
36:36So this is a site that has also been happening here for thousands of years.
36:39Of course.
36:40Yes.
36:41I've always been impressed by Bedouin culture.
36:45Their incredible ability to survive in the desert with the help of their prized camels.
36:51This is Khalaf al-Nizi.
36:54Ah.
36:55He's from the Niza tribe who have been here for thousands of years.
36:58Very good.
36:59Thank you, Salaam.
37:00Lovely to meet you.
37:01I'm Bethany.
37:02Where are you from?
37:03London.
37:04Mashallah.
37:05Mashallah.
37:06You have the most beautiful camels.
37:08He said anytime you come to Saudi Arabia, he will give you one camels just to travel anywhere you want.
37:23Shukran.
37:24Good.
37:25Shukran.
37:26That's...
37:27I mean, I've got to come back.
37:28He said this is the most quiet camel.
37:30Uh-huh.
37:31Yeah.
37:32Quietish.
37:33So, yeah, he trusts this camel.
37:35And this is the one I could travel on through Arabia.
37:38The ancient writers, Diodorus and Strabo, both praised Nabataean skill with camels.
37:53Strabo noted, camels afford the service they require instead of horses.
37:59It was camels that allowed the Nabataeans to control the thousands of miles of trade routes
38:04that spread out across the Arabian Peninsula.
38:10If you do a big journey, how far can you travel? How far can you go with the camels?
38:15The daily camels are running from 40 to 50 kilos and we'll stop at the 3rd of the day.
38:24Running, it can be 100 kilometres or more.
38:27Daily.
38:28Daily?
38:29Yes.
38:30I know from the Nabataeans in the past, they used everything in the camel.
38:35They used the skin, the fur, the wool, the milk, even the bones they're writing on.
38:41Is that still the same today?
38:43With the Bedouins, the Bedouins are still using the same techniques, the same use for the camels.
38:48But you're still carrying on those traditions that were here in history 2,300 years ago.
38:55You can always depend on a camel in the desert.
39:14Of course, water supply is a huge issue in the desert.
39:35Authors wrote about this to the Nabataeans saying that they lived in a wilderness claiming it as their native land,
39:42which had neither rivers nor abundant springs.
39:45But the Nabataeans have got it totally sorted.
39:48So they would leave secret markers for one another where there was water under the earth.
39:54And archaeologists are finding whole systems of wells and cisterns.
40:03As night falls, it's time to set up camp.
40:08It's cold here at night, so the priority is to get a fire going.
40:13Do you hear the stories about what it was like for your ancestors here?
40:28Would they ever navigate by the stars?
40:45Just thinking about the Nabataeans and their relationship to the desert.
41:02Because you spend so long traveling through this landscape,
41:07I imagine it must give you a great respect for the desert.
41:12Traveling in the desert, remove any fear he had.
41:30He learned the leadership skills from this desert.
41:33So interesting that, because when you get to know the Nabataeans,
41:39they do seem very confident, they have this real sort of confidence about them.
41:44And that's exactly what you, Abishat, are saying.
42:01Yeah. Well, again, that's what they said about the Nabataeans.
42:04They said that they were a people who loved liberty and who loved happiness.
42:08True. Yeah, I can say he's one of the Nabataeans, for sure.
42:16Waking up here, you realize how the Nabataeans must have measured themselves up,
42:20not against other civilizations, but this awesome landscape.
42:29Have a safe trip. I will. Thank you for looking after me.
42:31So I leave my new friends and take with me a deeper understanding of the Nabataeans' relationship
42:40with not just the natural world, but also the celestial world of the stars, the sun and the sky.
42:48It reminds me of a very special place right in the heart of Hegra.
43:03So this is called the sanctuary. And what happened up here really helps to explain the Nabataean world view.
43:18And it's an awesome view. I've not been up here before.
43:22Wow, what a vantage point. Look.
43:25Ah, you're actually on top of the world up here.
43:27So from here, you'd have been able to see the entire city and all of the tombs all around.
43:34So on this rock, you're literally right at the centre of things.
43:45This giant rock, surveying the residential area of the city,
43:49was home to the main site of ritual worship for the Nabataeans who lived here.
43:56It's just great to find this temple up here,
43:59because our old friend Strabo tells us that the Nabataeans worshipped the god of the sun
44:05and that they built altars up on the tops of their homes
44:08and every day made libations and burnt frankincense to him.
44:13And, wait for it, archaeologists discovered an incense burner right up here.
44:22There's evidence in the layout of the ancient city
44:24that the Nabataeans built Hegra centered on a solar belief system
44:29with the sun god Dushara at its heart.
44:33And archaeologists are working on a thesis right now
44:37that most of the very impressive tombs are orientated directly
44:42either towards the rising or the setting sun.
44:45OK, so I'm standing right in the middle of the temple,
44:56and these bases here represent the original columns or pillars.
45:01And if I get out my compass, it reveals something very, very cool.
45:06So these two here are facing east towards the rising sun,
45:10and these are orientated west where the sun sets,
45:15so the sun would have set directly between these two pillars,
45:20exactly as it is now.
45:22On my journey so far, I've learnt so much about the Nabataeans,
45:41from the unique, brand-new evidence being uncovered here.
45:44And the adventure continues.
45:53Next, I'm heading out of Hegra to explore the far corners
45:56of the Nabataeans' trading empire.
45:59Maybe that's where I will unlock the ultimate secrets
46:04of their extraordinary story.
46:07This is them reaching out to us across 2,000 years.
46:09And what they did, what they pioneered, would shape ancient history itself.
46:18This is the mystery itself.
46:19This is the mystery itself.
46:48God of God.
46:50That shows you the mystery itself.
46:53By Katrina pretending there is a mystery itself.
46:54Thus it is for you in a central чит.
46:57Without the Tamara you're cutting out,
46:59같 While you 노� Eric,
47:04on the one being Leonard,
47:05on the
47:13result you're dead and found.
Recommended
47:00
|
Up next
44:02
1:19:09
53:05
1:29:40
2:33:49
45:03
1:14:05
48:09
58:22
24:30
59:01
45:56
49:41
44:37
44:39
1:14:03
45:27