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00:20This is a truly extraordinary place, which at last is revealing its secrets.
00:37A place of legend and wonder, a lost city carved into these rocks that was home to one of the
00:46ancient world's most enigmatic and influential civilisations.
00:53A nomadic tribe called the Nabataeans, who burst out of the deserts of Arabia, built a vast trading empire spanning
01:03continents and then seemingly disappeared from the history books.
01:10Here's a story that has to be told.
01:17I'm hitting the road in a once in a lifetime journey across the ancient world.
01:24An epic quest from the historic settlements of Alulla in Saudi Arabia and the wonder of Petra in Jordan.
01:38To Greek islands like Kos and the Bay of Naples in Italy.
01:48With a network of world class researchers, we'll be analysing brand new evidence.
01:55Look at this.
01:57Testing exciting theories.
02:00Revealing new finds.
02:02You're making history, McKaylee.
02:05You're discovering here.
02:07And exploring uncharted territory.
02:10You can see it.
02:11All to start to reconstruct the Nabataean world.
02:15This is like a kind of postcard from the past.
02:21One in a million chance of finding a bit of pottery.
02:24Yes, that's what I say.
02:24That is awesome.
02:27They shared their world with some of the greatest characters in history.
02:31Queen Cleopatra, Roman Emperors, Herod the Great.
02:36We'll learn from people whose heritage reaches back through the centuries to this pivotal age.
02:42Oh, it's great to be back.
02:44You look well.
02:45Yeah.
02:46Still alive.
02:47Still alive.
02:53I'm going to rediscover this overlooked culture.
02:57Reveal how it still shapes our world.
03:00And try to solve the riddle of their mysterious fate.
03:06I want to bring them from the edges back to the centre of history.
03:10Where they belong.
03:13These geniuses of history.
03:16Who called themselves the Nabatae.
03:23Are the key to a lost world.
03:43Okay, so first I'm on a journey to try to uncover the origins of their story.
03:49And to ask the really fundamental question.
03:54Who exactly were the Nabataeans?
04:00Travelling this region for 30 years, I've come across traces of this long-forgotten civilisation.
04:07Who were the architects of awe-inspiring Petra.
04:12And on this adventure, I'm going to track their impact across the centuries.
04:17Revealing the Nabataeans as a missing link in the story of the ancient world.
04:23To show we can't understand classical history without them.
04:27And this is a sensational place to start.
04:32It's the ancient city of Hegra in northwest Saudi Arabia.
04:37And I'm discovering it for the first time.
04:46I'm starting my investigation here.
04:49Because Hegra is only now being fully explored.
04:55This UNESCO World Heritage Site is a frontline for research.
05:00And for groundbreaking discoveries about Nabataean civilisation.
05:07This city was the southern trading hub of a massive, rich kingdom.
05:15Its capital, Petra, close on 500 kilometres to the north.
05:19With influence and connections that stretched from the deserts of Arabia to modern-day Egypt.
05:26And key sites like the ancient port of Gaza on the Mediterranean.
05:29Bostra and Damascus in what's now Syria.
05:38Hegra flourished over 2,000 years ago.
05:44When Augustus was the first emperor of Rome.
05:48Following the defeat of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra.
05:53And the Kingdom of Judea was home to John the Baptist.
05:57Herod the Great.
05:59Herod the Great.
05:59Whose mother was Nabataean, by the way.
06:02And, of course, Jesus.
06:07I'm investigating Hegra.
06:09Looking for clues that explain the extraordinary rise of the city at this crucial moment of history.
06:22And I've been given permission to access somewhere very special.
06:28I'm heading to a unique vantage point that will give me rare perspective on this archaeological jewel.
06:35I'm researching here, so I've got special access to go up to the top.
06:42Yeah, go ahead.
06:48This scramble is up to a place in ancient Hegra where only archaeologists are allowed.
07:03I need to be really careful up here.
07:06It's a sensitive sight.
07:15Oh, my God.
07:18So I've climbed up here to get a Nabataean eye view because this is what the workers who built these
07:25amazing places would have seen.
07:27And it is just extraordinary because as far as the eye can see would have been a Nabataean settlement.
07:34Hardly any of it has been excavated yet.
07:37So there are so many secrets here just waiting to be discovered.
07:56Hegra is a hive of activity because it's rare to access this range of brand new archaeology.
08:02My tech team gets to work scanning and recording, joining teams from around the world.
08:08Like conservation specialists Estia racing to preserve the tombs.
08:14This is actually pretty incredible.
08:16Archaeologists hunting for lost artefacts.
08:20So this looks like that might be decoration or something on it, is it?
08:23This has a good chance of being able to be dateable.
08:29To a ground penetrating radar project exploring what lies under our feet.
08:36If we look around, this just looks like desert landscape, but there's an entire city under here.
08:40Yeah.
08:41All determined to uncover the secrets of Hegra.
08:48We can literally peel back the layers of time to see what was there before.
08:55Those are walls.
08:57Now imagine that kind of imagery spread throughout the entire city.
09:02A team, headed by Jan Fonke and Katja Schörle, have discovered evidence of a packed urban network.
09:11This is Pompeii of the Nabateans, right?
09:14And it's all there for us to discover.
09:18Data from the radar and 3D scans is collated by our graphic designers building a new three-dimensional model of
09:27the site.
09:28So we can start to reconstruct the heart of the city that lies buried under centuries of desert sand.
09:36And now for the first time in 2000 years, the evidence is coming together and we can start to see
09:43what this city actually looked like.
09:51Using the latest 3D scanning and visual effects, we're going to reconstruct Hegra.
09:56In the first century CE, it was the second biggest city in the Nabatean Kingdom after Petra, a busy, densely
10:05populated, walled settlement.
10:08I want to find out how it grew and thrived in the desert, powered by the Nabateans' unique attitude to
10:15life.
10:17Whenever the Nabateans want to do something very important…
10:22Leila Naime directed excavations at Hegra and is one of the world's leading authorities on the Nabateans.
10:29I'm keen to show her the model and get her take on exactly what we're discovering.
10:36So I'd love it if you can help me, because I find it a bit hard to get my head
10:38round the layout of the cities.
10:41The city itself, that one had to be protected. And so in order to protect it, they just built a
10:45city wall, a rampart.
10:47And the whole rampart of the city wall was about three kilometres long. And around it, there were about 80
10:55bastions.
10:57Like sort of watchtowers? Yeah, watchtowers or just places where, for instance, if there was an attack, they would just
11:03put some archers on sort of platform until the city was protected.
11:09How are they getting their water?
11:10They would be able to get access to a water table below the ground, which was very, very high.
11:19Aha. So if they dug a few metres, they would find water.
11:23At the beginning of our work, we identified 132 wells.
11:30That's a lot.
11:31It's a lot. And that says a lot about engineering.
11:34They can keep living here, that they've got their secure in their water supply.
11:38So how many people do you think are living in there?
11:41Well, that's a question I'm always asked. I would say a few thousand, because the urbanism is quite dense.
11:47And the whole thing is about 53 hectares. So that's already quite a large city.
11:52I mean, that's one of the things that's so exciting about this place and this study, is that there is
11:56so much more to discover.
11:58You know, all these little bits of the jigsaw puzzle of evidence is slowly coming into a full picture.
12:03And this wasn't just a city of the living. It was a city of the dead.
12:11Hegra's most striking survivors are over a hundred monumental tombs, many once richly decorated.
12:19The city is in the middle, and all the tombs are built or cut in the sandstone outcrops around the
12:28city.
12:28And is that? Is the visibility important?
12:30The notables, those who had these beautiful tombs built, they wanted everyone to know that they were rich enough to
12:39have a tomb as large, as decorated, as magnificent as possible.
12:44And so the largest tomb, the nicest ones, they are the most visible.
12:48And I mean, it is just extraordinary being in the site and seeing the level of preservation on those tombs.
12:55Some of them look like they were made yesterday.
12:57It is true. And one can even see very precisely the traces left by the tools which the stone cutters
13:06used to cut the tombs.
13:08And just with those details, they start to live again.
13:13Most of Hegra's tombs were looted in antiquity.
13:17But one day, Leila's team found a tantalising clue poking out of a giant sand dune.
13:24The top of a carved doorway.
13:28Inside the lost tomb were touching human remains.
13:32The first ever found here.
13:40Leading the project to analyse pre-Islamic remains here is forensic anthropologist Lauren Swift.
13:49Lauren and her team have spent months cataloguing what they believe to be the remains of 70 individuals.
13:57I'm hoping these poignant relics will bring me closer to this lost people.
14:05The amount of material that we have from these tombs is amazing.
14:09And it's not something that really comes along that often.
14:12We're hopeful that we can get some ADNA, some ancient DNA.
14:15So then we can say, were the people in these tombs related and how were they related?
14:20Are they men or women? Are they children? Are they old? Do they have pathologies?
14:24Do they have trauma that they lived with?
14:27You can do a lot of work on teeth, can't you?
14:29And that tells you age, but also what people's lifestyle was like, where they're from, what they're eating.
14:33Yeah, exactly. So if we have this mandible as an example.
14:37So you can see that we've got some of the molars at the back of, and they're really good.
14:41And this, I mean, really interesting, these, they're quite ground down, those teeth.
14:45Yes. You're living in a sandy, gritty environment. It gets into the food, it grinds down the teeth.
14:50You see that a lot in Egypt. It's got a similar environment.
14:55This one looks tiny, though. Is this a child?
14:58Yeah. They have got a molar and they've got canines developing.
15:02So that kind of allows us to really pinpoint the age a lot better than we can for any of
15:08the adult remains.
15:09So this person was probably around sort of eight, nine years, yeah.
15:14So tragic, because what's the story there? Why is an eight-year-old ended up in a grave?
15:19But more than just bones have survived.
15:23Other fragments suggest the Nabataeans treated their dead, probably buried together as families,
15:29with a reverence that matched their magnificent tombs.
15:34This particular one has a lot of organic tissue, as you can see, stuck to it.
15:39And then we have some of what, you know, a shroud or some fabric that they were wrapped in that
15:43you can see.
15:44Because we hear that, that they're wrapped in layer after layer.
15:47Yeah.
15:48And, you know, sometimes they have dates, like necklaces of dates left with them, don't they?
15:51But look at that. That's incredible.
15:54Yeah.
15:54That level of preservation is astonishing.
15:58I know this is a really obvious thing to say, but these are all individuals with individual lives
16:02and hopes and fears and passions and problems, you know, that they had to deal with.
16:07I think the least that we can do is to figure out who they were and give back that story.
16:12The evidence has reminded me that this once forgotten kingdom
16:16was a product of the decisions, ambitions and dreams of real people.
16:22And that this journey is ultimately a quest to really appreciate them.
16:32There's another place in Hegra I've been told I just have to check out
16:36if I want to understand what made the Nabataeans tick.
16:40I just love this place.
16:44It's right up in the north-eastern corner of the settlements and it's slightly out of the way.
16:49But it feels as though it has a kind of special atmosphere.
16:54And there might be a reason for that, because now it's called Jabal Ithlib.
16:59But for the Nabataeans, it was mah-ram-tar, a sacred space.
17:13Jabal Ithlib is a natural amphitheatre of towering rock formations outside the city walls.
17:26This was a sacred place, not just for the people of Hegra.
17:32If you look at the rock faces themselves, a lot of these holes aren't natural.
17:36They're human-made.
17:38So they're niches where the Nabataeans would have worshipped their gods.
17:42And we know that they even encourage visitors to pay respect to their own divinities here.
17:51The inhabitants of Hegra mingled here with outsiders,
17:55like visiting traders, bringing cargo to and from the city.
18:03You can just imagine people coming here in its heyday, can't you?
18:07And being really transported by the experience.
18:11And we don't know yet whether it was just the elite who were allowed here or everybody.
18:15But whoever inhabited this incredible space, they'd have been quenching their thirst with water
18:21and making offerings to their gods.
18:24And because they came from right across the region, they'd have been exchanging news and ideas.
18:35The sanctuary of Jabal Ithlib is connected to the rest of the city by this spectacular narrow canyon.
18:44So this is the Seek. The word means a chasm or a gorge.
18:48And it's leading me somewhere that was clearly super significant for the Nabataeans.
18:58Between the end of the Seek and the city walls is this incredible space.
19:03Carved into the rock by millions of chisel blows.
19:09It offers more clues to the thriving cosmopolitan nature of Hegra 2,000 years ago.
19:17This is so impressive, isn't it?
19:20So this is a place that is now known as the Diwan, which means a kind of meeting place or
19:26an assembly.
19:27But in the ancient world, places like this were called triclinia, which is actually a Latin word with Greek origins
19:35that meant a three-sided banqueting hall.
19:39So the Nabataeans, we know, would have come here and had these very formal banquets that almost had a kind
19:45of ritual tinge to them.
19:53Triclinia had been made famous by Roman banquet scenes, but actually may have originated in the east.
20:01So when they came here, they would have eaten and they would have done business.
20:06But there would have been a kind of sacred gloss to the things that happened here.
20:12And that makes sense for two reasons.
20:15One is that for the Nabataeans, commerce and money making, you feel almost was a kind of religious experience.
20:23This was what really mattered to them.
20:25And at this time in the ancient world, there just isn't a stark division between religion and everyday life.
20:33This was a landscape that was thick with gods and spirits and demigods and possibility.
20:45The historical record shows that there were visitors to what could have been Nabataean territory as far back as the
20:527th century BCE.
21:03This is from the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, and the Assyrian kingdom was centred on Iraq at the time.
21:10It's sort of Iraq and Syria and Kuwait and Iran.
21:13And he obviously has real respect for the Nabataeans.
21:16He says, I looked upon them with pleasure, but he also tells us that theirs was a land of thirst
21:23and a place of parching.
21:26Two authors writing 600 years later were fascinated by the Nabataeans.
21:31Strabo, a Greek, recorded their customs and society in his Geographica around 17 CE.
21:39And the writer of a world history, Diodorus Siculus, described Nabataean life around the same time.
21:45He says that like other Arabian tribes, they lived in the desert, but they far surpassed the others in their
21:54wealth.
21:55There is clearly just something special going on with the Nabataeans, so you have to wonder what is the secret
22:03of their success.
22:10I'm off to find another archaeology colleague who thinks she might have some answers.
22:15It's someone who's as passionate about exploring ancient cultures.
22:19I am, and she's an old friend.
22:21Hi.
22:21Hi, Hasse.
22:22How are you?
22:22Oh, so well.
22:24So lovely to see you.
22:25Good to see you.
22:25Really good.
22:33Hasse's story with Hegra started early, visiting her grandmother's farm nearby.
22:40I think you're saying that you used to come and play here when you were a kid.
22:43Is that right?
22:44Yes.
22:44So I used to come climb up the mountains, discover everything.
22:48So I've always been fascinated, and this is one of the reasons, you know, that drove me to study archaeology.
22:54She's agreed to show me artifacts from Hegra, which might help explain the Nabataeans' startling economic success.
23:03There's something Nabataeans are very famous for.
23:06Yeah.
23:06Is their pottery.
23:08Yes.
23:08And it's very famous because they called it akshal, because it's so thin and no one perfected pottery this thin,
23:16such as the Nabataeans.
23:17Yeah.
23:18Which is very beautiful to see.
23:20So you said that, that just tells me as well that beauty really matters to them.
23:25A picture slowly coming into focus of a highly developed culture, underpinned by a vibrant economy.
23:33Yes.
23:35And there was a surprise object found here.
23:40This coin is for Cleopatra.
23:44So that's so cool.
23:46So that's, you know, Pharaoh, Cleopatra, Queen Cleopatra, Cleopatra the Great, some people call her, you know, she was like,
23:53she's one of the most famous women of all time, let alone of the ancient world.
23:58So the people who were here, they knew about Egypt, they traded with them, you know, Cleopatra, like she's a
24:04household name for us, she would have been a household name for them too.
24:07Exactly.
24:08And this shows you, you know, how people were really connected.
24:11We always assume before people were not connected because there's no planes, there's no cars.
24:16It would take you maybe months to reach Egypt or less, but they were connected and they knew about each
24:21other.
24:21Yeah.
24:22And they traded with each other.
24:25All this because the Nabataean Kingdom was at a crucial intersection of trade routes, a network of great cities in
24:34Egypt, Greece and Rome.
24:36A web that extended to the markets of India and most importantly, accessed incense from southern Arabia.
24:46Of course, we've all heard of the three wise men bringing the baby Jesus, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
24:55But incense was also really important to ancient Egyptians.
24:59So they used frankincense in mummification.
25:03And you know, their beautiful coal rimmed eyes, that was often done with burnt frankincense wood,
25:10which, by the way, also acts as an insecticide.
25:13And the famous boy king Tutankhamun even had frankincense balls buried with him in his tomb.
25:22The Egyptians adored it so much, they called it Sweat of the Gods.
25:30The Nabataeans traded it west to Greeks and Romans and right across the ancient Middle East.
25:36Their virtual monopoly on the frankincense trade was secure by the third century BCE.
25:44It even reached as far away as the Han dynasty in China.
25:52But they didn't only dominate the frankincense trade.
25:56They also grew rich as the kings of a trade of an even rarer commodity.
26:02The petrochemical of antiquity thing called bitumen.
26:09The Greek historian Diodorus tells us a story of the epic battle for control of bitumen supplies.
26:17A conflict that played a pivotal role in the rise of the Nabataeans.
26:21It takes place 300 years earlier, around 312 BCE.
26:28Bitumen occurs naturally, bubbling up out of earth and water in particularly huge quantities in the Dead Sea.
26:37Back in the 4th century BCE, when the Nabataean kingdom was just starting out,
26:43the Dead Sea fell inside their borders, giving them control of a product that everyone wanted.
26:52Bitumen is incredibly useful.
26:56It can be used for lighting, for fuel as a building material,
27:02and crucially for the waterproofing of cisterns and drains and the hulls of boats.
27:09So by having monopoly of this trade, the Nabataeans were becoming spectacularly rich.
27:14But if there's one thing that history teaches you, it's that jewels often attract thieves.
27:24In this case, Alexander the Great, and on his death, those who followed him.
27:33A Greek Macedonian general, one of the successors to Alexander the Great's empire,
27:39sent a crack squad from Syria to seize the bitumen supply of the Dead Sea.
27:45We're told that the Nabataeans responded by mounting on reed rafts
27:50and raining arrows down on their enemy.
27:53It was a battle that became legendary
27:56and is possibly the world's first petrochemical conflict.
28:06The defeat of the armies of Greece in 312 BCE meant that the Nabataeans were here to stay
28:14and they used their wealth to found a civilisation that would flourish for the next 400 years.
28:26My quest to find the origins of the Nabataeans has brought me to a place called Umdaraj in Alullah,
28:33north-west Saudi Arabia.
28:38Because so many of the traces of the past here are hidden or really difficult to access,
28:43archaeologists have been taken to the skies to try to map what's going on
28:47and I've got a chance to join them.
28:55Great. Good luck.
29:00Archaeologist Wissam Khalil is on an aerial survey to investigate the region.
29:08Wissam and his colleagues have found clues that help piece together
29:12the story of the Nabataean Kingdom's expansion.
29:16Umdaraj is a mysterious rock formation about 20 kilometres from the city of Hegra
29:22and, these days, completely inaccessible.
29:28Well, this is the place. This is Umdaraj. We're on top of it.
29:31The cliff, over 900 feet high, is pot-marked with thousands of steps.
29:37The name Umdaraj, some say, means Mother of the Stairs.
29:43So there are some stairs, but some of it's like a sheer rock base.
29:47Yes. This is amazing.
29:48Amazing.
29:50Archaeologists believe that the steps once led to an ancient place of ritual.
29:57You're so close to the sky and the sun and up in the mountains.
30:01It's got to be something to do with kind of worshipping or appreciating the gods of the landscape up here.
30:06This entry was a site of worship for a civilisation that predates the Nabataeans here, a people called the Dadanites.
30:16Are they leaving anything up here as kind of offerings?
30:19Yes, exactly. Those offerings. We're talking about thousands of fragments of offerings.
30:26They were found here and hundreds and hundreds of statues.
30:28It's so cool up here.
30:35I mean, I've read about this place. I've heard about Dadan.
30:39Back down on the ground, Wussam guides me to the heart of the ancient city of Dadan,
30:44on the other side of the fertile valley, south of the Nabataean city of Hegra.
30:50The city was the capital of two civilisations, called the Dadanites and Leonites.
30:56And Wussam believes it's packed with evidence that they were forerunners of the Nabataeans.
31:04So these fragments were discovered on the top of the sanctuary.
31:09Wussam wants to show me fragments of statues left at a temple on top of Umdaraj.
31:15I mean, these are just extraordinary things. Please, please explain to me what I'm looking at.
31:21Who made them? How did they get to the top of the sanctuary?
31:25So hundreds of these statues were found on the sanctuary of Umdaraj.
31:30And this is a torso, this is a fragment of a statue.
31:35The head wasn't here and then the legs were also destroyed.
31:39So people are carrying these up from their home.
31:44It's such an effort to get up there that it must really have meant something significant to the women and
31:51men of Dadan.
31:56Look at this extraordinary face.
32:00You sure this is okay?
32:01Yeah, of course.
32:03Beautiful.
32:04So beautiful and so meaningful.
32:08There's a kind of serenity to it. It seems very tranquil in some ways.
32:13It's extraordinary and it's worth just taking a moment, isn't it?
32:16Because this is how old? 2,400 years old?
32:20Yes, exactly.
32:21I can't tell you that my heart is beating very fast.
32:24It is such an honour to hold this and just to imagine what this would have meant.
32:29Exactly.
32:29Every single object has a story behind that we don't know.
32:33There's some mystery behind.
32:34There is.
32:35It's one of those moments you just wish if only they could speak.
32:38If only they could tell us what their story is.
32:44The city and culture of Dadan was, like the later Nabataean Empire, built with wealth, made from that trade and
32:53incense from southern Arabia.
32:58It was famous, in a way, through the Bible.
33:01Yeah.
33:01Well, that's right, because Dadan, you hear about that in the Old Testament.
33:04Yes.
33:05So, both Ezekiel and Ezayi mentioned Dadan as a city trading with the East, trading with the East Mediterranean, specifically
33:15with the coastal city of Tyre in today's Lebanon.
33:18So, incense, spices, Dadan gained its power, gained its richness through its merchants.
33:26The Book of Isaiah says the Dadanites camped with camel caravans in the thickets of Arabia.
33:32And in Ezekiel, they're described as traders of ebony, ivory and fine saddlecloths.
33:40They're also winning out when it comes to the landscape.
33:44Because when you walk through here, there's that massive cistern, incredible cistern, that looks like it's carved out of a
33:49single block of stone.
33:51They're economically successful and they're also managing to kind of win the battle with the environment here.
33:57They understand nature.
34:00The people of Dadan built their incense trading empire from the 6th century BCE.
34:05And then, in the first century, new adventurers arrived, hungry for a piece of the action and ready to build
34:15their own trading centre at nearby Hegra.
34:19The Nabataeans.
34:22Do you think the Dadanites and Dadan inspired the Nabataeans?
34:26Yes, so both are North Arabian kingdoms, both spoke similar languages, and both shared knowledge about the desert, about the
34:40trade, about nature.
34:42By the end of the first century BCE, the Nabataeans had taken over trade routes and the regional economy from
34:50the Dadanites.
34:53I mean, it's such an important lesson that, isn't it, that the thread of history never snaps, that it's always
34:59one culture passing the baton onto the next.
35:03But at the same time, it feels to me as though the Nabataeans are doing things a little differently, acting
35:09in a way that was quietly radical.
35:13The Nabataeans aren't carving out an empire in the same way as the other superpowers of the day.
35:20So the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Persians.
35:25They're not building masses of huge cities.
35:28They're not enslaving entire populations.
35:32For them, what matters are roads and routes and communications.
35:38It's being on the trail of something that's really important.
35:43In the next leg of my journey, I'm going to head out into the desert, experiencing life on the trade
35:50routes where the Nabataeans built their success.
35:58I'm preparing for a journey south of Hegra, searching for the truth of the Nabataeans' origins.
36:07I was giving a tip off it was worth coming here.
36:10And apart from this being the most enormous mountain, I think, I think I can see something incredible up there.
36:16Hang on.
36:19This place is now called Wadi al-Nam.
36:22And I've asked Bata and Ellie from my team to send up their drones to investigate what looks like ancient
36:29art high on the rock face.
36:32That's great. Can you get a bit closer to the rock?
36:36A tiny bit higher, maybe?
36:38Yeah, a bit higher.
36:46Definitely birds. I mean, they have to be ostriches, don't they?
36:51There's so many of them.
36:56Wadi al-Nam offers evidence the ecology of this region was very different thousands of years ago.
37:04So this is like a kind of postcard from the past.
37:10These incredible ancient artworks, which the Nabataeans would have witnessed, reveal a more fertile kind of landscape.
37:21You've got those huge herds of ostriches, giant oxen, giant cows.
37:29And we know that there were leopards here.
37:32I mean, this would have been a landscape just teeming with wildlife.
37:37It's spectacular, Ellie. I've not, honestly, I've never seen rock art like this.
37:41This is incredible.
37:45The carvings at Wadi al-Nam suggest to me that the people who carve them must have had a productive
37:52relationship with the natural world.
38:05If I'm going to try to understand the Nabataean world from their point of view, then I need to appreciate
38:12and understand the landscape that they thrived in.
38:15So I'm leaving Hegra. I'm going to head out to the desert and I'm planning to experience it and stay
38:24there.
38:27On my way, I've stopped at the oasis of Al-Ula to meet someone who's promised to introduce me to
38:35local Bedouins.
38:38My people with an unparalleled knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula are the Bedouins.
38:43The name almost certainly comes from Bedou, which means a desert dweller.
38:48And I've spent time with them before.
38:50And there's a contact here who's invited me to join a camel caravan that's passing through.
38:58Hello, Ahmed. Hello. Thank you. I'm Bethany.
39:01Thank you so much. Hi, Bethany.
39:03Hi. How lovely to see you.
39:04Good to see you. Welcome in Al-Ula.
39:16Ahmed al-Imam's family traces its heritage back at least five centuries in this region.
39:23My mother actually grow somewhere there, not far from here.
39:27The third garden from here.
39:29Oh, you can just see her house?
39:30Yeah, yeah, of course.
39:32So the history is alive here.
39:35Yeah, two tribes are the same.
39:37We change the civilization name, but still the people are here.
39:42Yeah, amazing.
39:43The people have stayed and the memories have stayed.
39:46Yeah, true.
39:57We're travelling the next stage of our journey on foot.
40:04Our cars will meet us tomorrow morning.
40:07I hope.
40:13Ahmed knows the perfect contact to act as our guide.
40:22His tribe have been travelling here around this region for thousands of years.
40:27Yes.
40:28And look at that site.
40:30So this is a site that has also been happening here for thousands of years.
40:35I've always been impressed by Bedouin culture.
40:38Their incredible ability to survive in the desert with the help of their prized camels.
40:45This is Khalaf al-Nizi.
40:47He's from the Niza tribe who have been here for thousands of years.
40:52Very good.
40:53Salaam.
40:53Lovely to meet you.
40:54I'm Bethany.
40:55Where are you from?
40:55London.
40:56Mashallah.
40:57Mashallah.
40:58Mashallah.
40:58You have the most beautiful camels.
41:10He said anytime you come to Saudi Arabia, he will give you one camel just to travel anywhere you want.
41:17Shukran.
41:18Shukran.
41:19That's...
41:20I mean, I've got to come back.
41:21He said this is the most quiet camel.
41:23Uh-huh.
41:24Yeah.
41:25Quietish.
41:26So, yeah, he trusts this camel.
41:27And this is the one I could travel on through Arabia.
41:39The ancient writers, Diodorus and Strabo, both praised Nabataeans' skill with camels.
41:46Strabo noted, camels afford the service they require instead of horses.
41:51It was camels that allowed the Nabataeans to control the thousands of miles of trade routes
41:57that spread out across the Arabian Peninsula.
42:03If you do a big journey, how far can you travel?
42:07How far can you go with the camels?
42:17Running, it can be 100 kilometers or more.
42:20Daily.
42:21Daily?
42:22Yeah.
42:23I know from the Nabataeans in the past, they used everything in the camel.
42:27They used the skin, the fire, the wool, the milk, even the bones, for writing on.
42:34Is that still the same today?
42:36With the Bedouin, the Bedouin is still using the same techniques, the same use for the camels.
42:42But you're still carrying on those traditions that were here in history 2,300 years ago.
43:04Yeah.
43:05You can always depend on a camel in the desert.
43:24Of course, water supply is a huge issue in the desert.
43:30Authors wrote about this to the Nabataeans, saying that they lived in a wilderness, claiming it as their native land,
43:36which had neither rivers nor abundant springs.
43:39But the Nabataeans have got it totally sorted, so they would leave secret markers for one another,
43:46where there was water under the earth.
43:48Often archaeologists are finding whole systems of wells and systems.
43:57As night falls, it's time to set up camp.
44:01It's cold here at night, so the priority is to get a fire going.
44:12Thank you so much for this beautiful fire.
44:15And I've learnt the name now, Naar.
44:17Naar, yeah.
44:18This is the only thing we offer for the people like this group.
44:25So you're welcome. This is the last thing you can offer for his guests.
44:30Oh, thank you. I can see I'm very pleased to see there's tea in the fire.
44:35Good Bedouin tea.
44:38Do you hear the stories about what it was like for your ancestors here?
44:59Would they ever navigate by the staff?
45:14Just thinking about the Nabataeans and their relationship to the desert.
45:19Because you spend so long travelling through this landscape,
45:24I imagine it must give you a great respect for the desert.
45:29The first thing is that the nature of the nature of the earth and the islands
45:34will give you the trust of yourself.
45:36It will give you the trust of yourself.
45:38And it will give you the trust of yourself when you are with your food.
45:42Or a different food.
45:43Traveling in the desert remove any fear he had.
45:47He learned of the leadership skills from this desert.
45:50Hmm. It's so interesting that because
45:54when you get to know the Nabataeans they do seem very confident.
45:58They have this real sort of confidence about them.
46:00And that's exactly what you, Abu Fahat, is saying.
46:17Yeah.
46:19Well, again, that's what they said about the Nabataeans.
46:21They said that they were a people who loved liberty
46:23and who loved happiness.
46:26True.
46:26Yeah, he's, I can say, he's one of the Nabataeans, for sure.
46:31As I sleep here tonight under the same stars
46:34that the Nabataeans slept under,
46:35I can imagine them feeling the same as well.
46:41Oh, well, you've made me very happy tonight.
46:49I've traveled in time and I've made a new friend.
46:53Hot, sweet, Bedouin tea.
46:55Oh, well, there's one there.
46:55Oh, perfect.
46:58This is so good.
47:03Waking up here, you realize how the Nabataeans
47:07must have measured themselves up,
47:08not against other civilizations,
47:11but this awesome landscape.
47:20So I leave my new friends and take with me a deeper understanding
47:26of the Nabataeans' relationship
47:27with not just the natural world,
47:30but also the celestial world
47:33of the stars, the sun and the sky.
47:45It reminds me of a very special place
47:49right in the heart of Hegra.
47:57So this is called the Sanctuary
48:00and what happened up here
48:03really helps to explain the Nabataean world view.
48:07And it's an awesome view.
48:09I've not been up here before.
48:10Wow, what a vantage point, look.
48:13Ah, you're actually on top of the world up here.
48:15So from here, you'd have been able to see
48:18the entire city
48:19and all of the tombs all around.
48:22So on this rock,
48:24you're literally right at the center of things.
48:32This giant rock,
48:34surveying the residential area of the city,
48:37was home to the main site of ritual worship
48:40for the Nabataeans who lived here.
48:43It's just great to find this temple up here
48:46because our old friend Strabo tells us
48:50that the Nabataeans worshipped the god of the sun
48:53and they built altars up on the tops of their homes
48:56and every day made libations
48:58and burnt frankincense to him
49:00and, wait for it,
49:03archaeologists discovered an incense burner
49:05right up here.
49:09There's evidence in the layout of the ancient city
49:12that the Nabataeans built Hegra
49:14centered on a solar belief system
49:16with the sun god Dushara at its heart.
49:21And archaeologists are working on a thesis right now
49:24that most of the very impressive tombs
49:27are orientated directly
49:29either towards the rising or the setting sun.
49:40OK, so I'm standing right in the middle of the temple
49:43and these bases here represent the original columns or pillars
49:47and if I get out my compass,
49:50it reveals something very, very cool.
49:53So these two here are facing east towards the rising sun
49:58and these are orientated west where the sun sets
50:02so the sun would have set directly between these two pillars
50:06exactly as it is now.
50:23On my journey so far,
50:25I've learned so much about the Nabataeans
50:28from the unique, brand-new evidence being uncovered here.
50:37And the adventure continues.
50:40Next, I'm heading out of Hegra
50:42to explore the far corners of the Nabataeans' trading empire.
50:46Maybe that's where I will unlock
50:49the ultimate secrets of their extraordinary story.
50:54This is them reaching out to us across 2,000 years.
51:00And what they did, what they pioneered,
51:03would shape ancient history itself.
51:06Let's see if you can't or anything.
51:10Come here.
51:26I'm all back.
51:27No, I'm all back.
51:36I'm all back.
51:46Transcription by CastingWords
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