Lost City Beneath Jerusalem Home Unearthed | Parable Documentary

This channel is part of the History Hit Network. Stick around to find out more. I'm going on an adventure. Unzip the archaeology. Make it naked. Accidental archaeologists, construction workers, goat herders, and intrepid amateurs find way more stuff than the card-carrying kind. Whether you're talking biblical tombs in Jerusalem or ancient scrolls in Qumran, bonafide archaeologists are almost never the first ones there. The trouble is, a lot of them dismiss or discredit anything they didn't find themselves. Are they justifiably cautious or just a little jealous? I'm off to the land of the Bible to see what intrepid amateurs have turned up and to find out why the pros are treating them like second-class citizens. Here, get the kiss. Did you get the kiss? I got the kiss. You got it? Yeah. God bless you. What a good kiss. I know, he wasn't kidding around. I think there was tongue there too. John, this is a family show. But did you get a close-up? Oh, I got a close-up. It's fun making a biblical archaeology show. That's the problem with everybody. They took all the fun out of the archaeology, the Bible, Israel, and just a bunch of guys sitting around talking about fish bones. Enough of that. I'll ask the archaeologists to kiss, but no tongue. The romance begins in Jerusalem, where I'm meeting with two amateurs who've battled the pros for over three decades. This may well be the father of King Solomon's wife. Back in 1970, Theo and Miriam Siebenberg bought land high on the western hill with a king's view of the Temple Mount. Today, Theo and Miriam live in one of the most unusual homes in Jerusalem. The upstairs is ultra-modern. The basement, well, we'll get to the basement. Now did you study archaeology? When I came here, I just had to start digging. I wanted the archaeologists to do it. I spoke to the professor who was in charge of the excavations in the old city. He stated this officially, I've gone down to bedrock and there's nothing there. A stone's throw away, archaeologist Nachman Avigad was making headlines with the discovery of ancient remains of the city of David. The western hill was not a priority. But in the time of Jesus, this was the site of Herod's palace and the mansions of the wealthy. How could there be no archaeological remains? But they gave you official permission to dig. A team of architects, engineers, diggers and donkeys worked for two years before Theo hit pay dirt. The first item was this particular key. This is the first thing you found? A 2,300 year old ring that somebody would wear on their finger, and it's a key to their precious jewellery box. Right. There was a little ball of dirt and they were going to carry it out. I said wait a minute and I picked it up. So you saw it with your own eyes? Right. The ring was just the tip of the iceberg, but the pros were unimpressed. Just like when a Bedouin goat herder found the Dead Sea Scrolls in a cave in Qumran back in 1947. It was an accident. He threw a rock into a cave and broke open an ancient jar. The rest is history. I've come to the museum where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept to talk to Adolfo Reutmann, about the greatest accidental biblical find of all time. What are the Dead Sea Scrolls all about? The Dead Sea Scrolls are a major discovery. We have around 200 biblical manuscripts from 2,000 years ago. In all the cases, we have fragmentary material, not a complete section or scroll, except for one, the Book of Isaiah. The Book of Isaiah is one out of the first seven scrolls, the mythological seven first scrolls discovered by the Bedouins in Cave 1. So they're the best archaeologists? Oh, as always. My feeling is non-professionals who know the countryside, who work, who live among the tombs, who don't have to get permits, who don't have to follow scientific method, are actually in a better position to find headline-grabbing artifacts. What do you think? Maybe in this case, you are right. They live in the area of the Judean Desert. They know very much the area. They know how to get and to reach the caves in the cliffs. So, and it's very, in many cases, it's very hard to actually to reach all these caves, and they know how to do it. This is the full copy one? This is the full copy, but this is a facsimile of the full copy. You mean it's a copy? It's a copy. It's not the real thing? It's not the real. We have the real thing, and in a few moments, I'll show you the Holy of the Holies. If you love history, then you'll love History Hit. We have tons of exclusive documentaries about the most important people in history that you will not find anywhere else. There is a great collection of religious history content available to History Hit subscribers, from the Crusades to the birth of Islam. There are plenty of topics to choose from for your next documentary fix. We're committed to bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else. Sign up now for a 14-day free trial, and Parable fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code PARABLE at checkout. Okay, we're going into the Holy of Holies. Everybody else is out there looking at the facsimile, or the fake, really. No. Sorry, not the fake, the facsimile. The photocopy of the real thing. Look at this. Is this thick enough? What's the combination? I bet you it's cell number. What's your cell phone number? You have here a great opportunity. Actually, a unique one. No, we appreciate it. Believe me. To show to your public, actually, the real Isaiah scroll that actually, you see. This is a real wow. Oh my God. This is the only full copy of any biblical book discovering the word. This one is unique. Written 2,100 years ago. 2,100 years ago? When the scribe copied down this specific one, Heal the Elder, Jesus, Herod the Great, were not born yet. It's not a fake. It's not a copy. On the basis of all the methods we know, we know that this is an original one. It's safe to say we wouldn't have the Dead Sea Scrolls, a priceless window on the ancient world, if we left archaeology to archaeologists. Don't touch. Am I touching? Two seconds. Okay, goodbye. Just kidding. I'm meeting with biblical archaeologist Gabi Barkay to find out why some of his peers are so quick to judge new finds fake. Because the archaeologists have to abide by certain rules, they're not the ones that are going to find the stuff that gets the headlines. At the end of the day, some, you know, Bedouin going into a cave is going to find the Dead Sea Scrolls. Isn't that frustrating? This is life. We have to make of it the best we can. But some archaeologists get so frustrated, they start saying that everything that wasn't found in a dig is worthless. I don't subscribe to that approach. We have to build the knowledge of the past based upon all possible sources. Yeah, but a lot of people say that... I've heard a lot of... That includes also suspicious sources. But there are people who, if I found it, it's good. If you found it, it's bad. Yes, there are such people. What can we do? For 10 years, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the very famous Dead Sea Scrolls, were portrayed in daily papers as a fake, as a forgery, as a masterpiece of fake, etc. So one should be very careful. Give it enough time. Give it enough thought. And one shouldn't hurry. It was 10 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls were authenticated, but only after the card-carrying archaeologists found more scrolls nearby. What will it take for the Siebenbergs to win their respect? Theo Siebenberg found the remains of a 2,200-year-old mansion under his house in Jerusalem's Old Jewish Quarter. Archaeologists ignored the amateur find, but nothing would stop him. So what happened? You continued digging and what happened? I found all kinds of things, and the archaeologists were just not interested. You could have found the lost Ark of the Covenant. They wouldn't care. Professor Avigal mentioned it. There was nothing here. So there was nothing. But there was something. Theo found tons. A Roman crucifixion nail, a rare glass bracelet, and hundreds of other artifacts. Seeing all this, you have to wonder, what drove Theo underground? The answer is in his own past. A Belgian-born Holocaust survivor, Theo was a child when his family fled the invading Nazis. Uprooted because of who he was, he longed for home. Not Antwerp, but Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount, the heart of the Jewish faith. He wanted a direct link with his Jewish ancestors. Theo's basement is that link. Since he's not as mobile as he once was, Theo's wife Miriam is taking me down. Wow, I thought it was a little basement here we're talking about. This is your basement? I thought it was a little basement with a ping pong table and some ancient stuff. You don't have a ping pong table? The first layer of the Siebenberg basement seems to be the mansion of a priestly family. It dates back to the 2nd century BC and contains items of religious significance. And you can see that the ceiling is actually the floor of our house. All this was a hill. And this is what is called a foot bath. The person would sit here. Like this? Yes, exactly. This is how they did it. Ritual purity is essential to religious Jews and is the foundation of Christian baptism. This is a Mikveh ritual bath. It has six or seven steps. And this is where baptism comes from and stuff like that. This is an unbelievable being. Actually stepping on? Yeah, stepping up on stairs. From 2,000 years ago, the water would cover all the stairs and everybody would go down according to his height and immerse himself. Simcha would have to go down all the way. I would have to go all the way there. Yeah, exactly. The Bible says King Solomon built a holy temple to house the Ark of the Covenant, which held the Ten Commandments. The center of all Jewish life for a thousand years, the temple stood less than 100 meters from this spot. You believe that the people who went into this Mikveh, went into this ritual bath, purified themselves, came out and went to the temple? Yes. That's unbelievable actually. Now all these stones that you see all around you, we picked them up one by one. We brought them here and we put them all in one place so there'll be a memorial for the palace that stood here 2,000 years ago. A priestly mansion this close to the temple mount would be no small find for two amateurs. And the Siebenbergs say there's even bigger news below. Still, archaeologists ignore them. Is that because they didn't find it themselves? If they're jealous of anyone, shouldn't they be jealous of the greatest archaeologist anywhere, the bulldozer? Built for digging, not for archaeology. How important is construction dynamite and bulldozers in Jerusalem archaeology, biblical archaeology? Wherever you go in Jerusalem and in this country in general, you come upon ancient remains. So many archaeological discoveries are just chance finds as a result of modern development. Sometimes people blow up the rock for construction and they find the entrance to a burial cave. Jason's tomb? Jason's tomb in 1956 was discovered while blasting the rock for construction. Somewhere, someone sets a blast to erupt rich ores of metal from stubborn rock. It was in West Jerusalem. Contractors were just doing their job when they almost wrecked the 2,000-year-old resting place of a family of Jewish priests. Construction came to a crashing halt. Archaeologists took over. The builders had no choice but to work around them. Today, Jason's tomb is just part of the hood. I spoke to resident Bracha Bentsvi about what it's like living with a past so present. Is it strange to have an ancient 2,000-year-old tomb in the middle of all these new apartment buildings? Not in Jerusalem. I think every place that you are digging in Jerusalem, you find something. This is something special of Jerusalem. I can tell you that we call it the cave here. And my son, when he was small, he was playing there in the cave. We were telling him all the time, don't go to the cave, come home. In Hebrew it sounds better. The bulldozer is a great tool for uncovering ancient finds. But what happens when it's used to cover them up? When a bulldozer uncovers archaeology in Jerusalem, you often call David Mevorach. To what degree is bulldozer archaeology responsible for a lot of the big finds? Huge extent. It's unbelievable how many of the important finds that we have are accidental finds. All the neighborhoods around us are upon ancient sites. So this is a very common thing in Jerusalem. Does the bulldozer driver get a honorary PhD? Immediately. Is it safe to say that bulldozers have discovered more stuff than trained archaeologists? No, it's not. Why are construction workers better? Well, a bulldozer just bulldozes. But an archaeologist has to follow the rules. He applies for permission from various governing bodies. He consults committees, raises money, hires staff, digs, dusts, counts, measures, documents, researches. He fills out paperwork, publishes exhibits. He's far too busy to find things. I met with archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, who thinks amateurs searching for buried treasure are signing up for heartbreak. Look, we are excavating in Jerusalem for a century and more, a century and a half. Every square meter in Jerusalem, almost every square meter has been checked and dug. By professional excavators. Professional excavators, big time. I mean, with hundreds of people in the field from morning to evening for months and years in an effort of a century and a half in major excavations, consortium of universities, going with hundreds of students. What happened? They found very little. If archaeologists don't find much, amateurs and bulldozers do. They aren't shackled by protocol. But once a construction worker's found something ancient, doesn't he have to follow the rules? The developers, on the other hand, are not very happy when such an instance occurs because they have not only to stop the work, but also finance the excavation. Sometimes the whole project is cancelled. So if you're a developer building a building, condos... You pray not to have an archaeological site in your ground. Some people know that there are remains and some of them do work at night to try to avoid being monitored. And there are all kinds of cases. It's a cat and mouse game between the archaeologists and the builders? Yes. This is the basement of a convention center in Jerusalem. When it was being constructed, bulldozers made a major find. But instead of calling the authorities, developers tried to cover it up. But they got busted and archaeologists moved in. What they uncovered was an ancient Roman tile and brick factory. This place was found by that most famous archaeologist of all time, in biblical archaeology at least, John A. Bulldozer. Bulldozer did it again. Two thousand year old kilns. This is a big house. This is a factory. This is not one kiln. The size of this kiln, where I'm staying here, this is where the fire was. Above me over here was all the pottery. We're talking about tile making, road building, water supplies. This is the guts of the Roman army. This is what made possible 200 years of Roman occupation of this area. Built by the army itself, by the most feared legion of all time, the 10th Roman legion. This is all real stuff. This is the kilns as they were found. Look, the bricks are still there. Here, come here, come here, come here. This is the stamp of the 10th Roman legion. These were big shots. And it was found by bulldozer. Way to go, bull. When we come back, some amazing bulldozer finds from the sacred grounds of the Temple Mount. Due to nasty politics, they were tossed in a dump. Now archaeologist Gabi Barkay is struggling against time to uncover historical treasures from the trash. I haven't even started yet and I've already found something. Modern glass. This is one of the most sacred sites in the world. For Muslims, it's the Dome of the Rock, where the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. For Christians, it's where Jesus taught the law as a youngster. For Jews, it's the site where the Holy Temple once stood and where the Ten Commandments were kept. One of the biggest archaeological mysteries in the world is what's under the Dome of the Rock. The problem is, the politics of who controls the site have prevented any major archaeology from being carried out near the dome. In 1999, the Muslim Authority did some controversial renovations under the building. They dug up and dumped tons of debris into a nearby valley. And yet archaeologists weren't allowed to sift through it to see if it contained any ancient artifacts. They dug a huge pit with heavy machinery. Actually, it was an archaeological disaster described by the Director of Antiquities as a crime, archaeological crime. It was just dumped there. And when you said, I want to dig this, on the other hand, so the Muslim authorities were just bulldozing this archaeological stuff, but what about the Israelis? Did they give you a big slap on the back and say, way to go, you're willing to do this? I was denied the license. There were all kinds of conditions. I had to change the application. It took Barkay five years of political wrangling to get permission to set up a proper excavation. Now the sifting has begun. What we do, we fill up the material from these piles into buckets. Then the material is soaked for a couple of hours and then it is sifted through screens. Oh, Gabi, look at that. What do you make of that? Either late Roman or Byzantine. It's a nice ancient coin. We'll have to clean it. How much am I getting paid for this? I don't think you deserve anything. Barkay has searched through only a small portion of the rubble and has already uncovered a treasure trove of history. Oh my goodness, we have here a... Wow, look at that. A goat's head. This is amazing. What period is this? This is late Roman probably. For me, the most important pieces are plain pottery pieces such as these from the time of Prophet Isaiah, from the time of King Hezekiah. They are 2,800 years old and this is the important stuff that we have. Is this a comb? It is a comb. It may have still lice upon it. Original ones, yes. And what could the lice teach us? They suffered from the same curses we suffer from today. You know, when you see coins and whatever, but this is so human, you know? It is. Everything is human. Whoa. This is an arrowhead which was first introduced by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. 586. This is the tragedy of the destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem. The destruction of Solomon's Temple which occurred 400 years after it was built. The Bible talks about the destruction of Solomon's Temple and this is an actual arrowhead from that time at the Temple Mount. Yes. That's pretty amazing. Listen, every piece which comes from the Temple Mount is very special for me. Not only nicely shaped objects as this one, but the odd pieces of pottery that teach us a lot about people's presence upon the Temple Mount, that is what matters for me. So every piece is very, very significant. Whatever the politics might be, it's another example of the bulldozer unwittingly being mobilized for the sake of archaeology. On the other side of the Temple Mount, Miriam Siebenberg is equally enthusiastic about the archaeological history in her basement. I heard of people who hug trees. Do you hug stones? No, I don't have to give it a hug, but I love to watch them. They speak to you? They speak to me. Really? Yes. What do you feel? I feel that they saw and listened to the people that were here. They saw everything that was going on and they got their soul. These stones have soul. I think so. You're only yards away from where the Temple Mount used to be, where the Dome of the Rock is right now. Yes. This must be one of the most incredible views in Israel. The only one, I think. Chance finds, whether by wandering Bedouins or construction workers, are the foundation of biblical archaeology. The amateurs are the unsung heroes of the trade. Without them, we wouldn't have the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jason's tomb, and these artifacts from the Siebenberg basement. Maybe it's time to give them a well-deserved pat on the back.