All language subtitles for Historys+Greatest+Mysteries+S06E20

Tonight, they are among the Bible's most
legendary sites, even though so much

about them is shrouded in mystery.

Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel,
Mount Sinai, did these places exist at

one time?

The book of Genesis is full of clues, if
you know where to look.

Finding these iconic lost locations
could reveal much about humanity's

past. Many of these stories are rooted
in history.

and they are telling us stories about
the complex nature of who we are.

Future archaeological breakthroughs may
bring us that much closer to

understanding the Old Testament and
unlocking its secrets.

Few sites in the Bible are holier than
Mount Sinai. The problem is, no one

actually knows where it is.

Maybe a natural catastrophe destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah, and if so, there

should be signs of what happened.

These could be the actual ruins of the
Tower of Babel.

Now, we explore the top theories
surrounding these lost biblical places.

Did they actually exist? And if so,
where could they be?

For thousands of years, the Bible's Old
Testament has been the bedrock of Judeo

-Christian beliefs.

But so much about this important
document remains unknown, including who

it and when.

According to Jewish tradition, the first
five books of the Bible were given

directly to Moses by God after he led
the Israelites out of Egypt.

And until the 19th century, scholars
believe that Moses did write all of

books.

Scholars today believe that at least
parts of these books were based on

passed down from generation to
generation through oral tradition, and

therefore predate Moses by hundreds, if
not thousands of years.

While we're not sure of the origins of
these stories, literally for billions of

people around the world, these stories
talk about actual people, actual places.

actual events that are still important
to us today.

What's clear is that some Old Testament
locations are very real.

We don't have bones that we can trace
back to people that are featured in the

Old Testament, but some of the places
that are mentioned still exist and you

still visit them today.

One place that's very well known is the
Dome of the Rock.

The Dome of the Rock was built in 691 CE
in Jerusalem, but it is built on the

location where Abraham almost sacrificed
his son Isaac.

And then, 20 miles to the south, we also
have the Cave of the Patriarchs.

There's a tomb there, and the legend is
that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are

buried here.

But the Bible also mentions many
important places we can't definitively

Where's the Garden of Eden?

Where are Sodom and Gomorrah? Is the
Bible making these places up?

Or did these places exist at one time
and they're just mysteries? We haven't

found them yet.

The Old Testament's full of stories that
have almost a kind of mythical quality

to them.

And once you can go back and visit it,
it makes those stories real.

It turns them from myth into history.

The Bible is about more than science.
And so we can understand that faith and

science, faith and reason don't have to
conflict. They are telling us two

different stories about the complex
nature of who we are.

One of the most elusive sites from the
Old Testament is the Tower of Babel.

In the book of Genesis, in the early
times after Noah's flood, Humankind is

united. They all speak the same
language.

And as these people begin to migrate to
the east, they reach a land called

Shinar.

Shinar is the ancient Hebrew name for
Mesopotamia, the Middle Eastern region

often referred to as the cradle of
civilization.

Within the biblical tradition, these
were people who wanted recognition. And

in the story, the idea is that this
tower that they build to make a name for

themselves, literally reaches up to the
heavens into the clouds.

The humans want to be like God.

And so the story of the Tower of Babel
is about pride, or at least the

of trying to be like the gods.

So God looks down and decides that this
is something that needs to be stopped.

He decides to mix all of the languages
of all of the workers so that they're no

longer able to understand each other and
work together.

According to the story, in the aftermath
of God's wrath, the entire project

falls apart, the people are scattered,
the city is abandoned, the tower falls

into ruins.

The location of the partially built
tower remains a mystery.

But is it possible the Bible actually
hints?

about where it could be?

The clue to the location of the Tower of
Babel may in fact be in the name

itself. We think of Babel as babbling,
incoherent. What if instead Babel meant

location?

Semitic scholars know that Bab El
actually comes from the word of gate,

El, God, the gate of God, which refers
to a specific city in Mesopotamia in an

area. known as Iraq today.

Babylon, as a city, has a long history.
It was probably founded between 1770 and

1670 BCE, and it had about 200 ,000
people living in it, making it the

city of the ancient world.

The ruins of Babylon today can be found
about 55 miles south of Baghdad on the

banks of the Euphrates River.

In 1899, German archaeologist Robert
Koldove begins excavating there.

Koldove and a team of some 200
researchers descends on this region, the

location of Babylon, and they spend
years, day after day, excavating the

They're finding more and more of the
city walls, and then they find something

really fascinating.

So in 1913, he and his team find a giant
base of a ziggurat.

A ziggurat is a kind of tiered pyramid
-like structure often used to worship

Mesopotamian gods.

Col de Vey's team discovers that not
only is the foundation massive, but it

appeared to match up perfectly with the
biblical text.

It says in the book of Genesis,
specifically, that the people would take

and bake them. This is what the tower is
constructed out of.

Well, Goldivet discovers when he's out
there excavating the base of the

that it's also made of baked bricks.

The ziggurat that is found.

It's 300 feet long by 300 feet wide. In
modern terms, that's basically the

length of two football fields.

And you can imagine how tall a building
that would allow for, because the wider

the base is, the taller the tower.

Could this be the base of the Tower of
Babel?

For the time, a building that huge, that
monumental, would have been the tallest

thing around. It's easy to imagine that
people would think that it reached all

the way to the heavens.

But before the team can finish
excavating the ziggurat, they hit a

The archaeological team is not able to
investigate this further because the

of the tower actually sits below the
modern water table. So if they were to

any lower, they would flood the site.

It's possible that Koldove and his team
were on the verge of a major

breakthrough. But suddenly they were
stopped in their tracks.

The dig may be over, but the question
remains, is this really the Tower of

Babel? Some believe an ancient stone
relic known as the Isagila tablet may

the answer.

This tablet was originally found in the
1800s. It's located in the Louvre Museum

today, but it dates back to the 6th
century BCE.

On this tablet, it mentions...

a temple which sits next to a ziggurat
that had a base of about 300 feet wide,

ziggurat that reaches about 300 feet
tall, which would make it the tallest

standing structure in ancient
Mesopotamia. It sounds an awful lot like

structure that was dug up back in 1913.

Then, in the 1990s, another stone
tablet...

discovered in a private collection,
reveals an intriguing link between

and the Tower of Babel.

One of the first things they found was
that it contained the outline of a giant

seven -storied ziggurat.

Additionally, it had a depiction of King
Nebuchadnezzar II, with the implication

being that he was the one who ordered
the construction of this giant ziggurat.

There was even an inscription that they
translated that said that Nebuchadnezzar

had brought in laborers speaking
different languages from, quote, all

everywhere into his capital city of
Babylon to build this giant edifice.

What they discover is that this
inscription explicitly mentions this

or Tower of Babylon.

What's more, you can directly connect
this inscription with the tablet that's

back in the Louvre that also talks about
the ziggurat of Babylon.

Some scholars believe that the
information on these two tablets, the

the ziggurat, its incredible size,
Nebuchadnezzar, all the different

indicate that this is indeed the Tower
of Babel. This would mean that

could be the site where God changes the
course of humanity forever.

It's a compelling theory, but there are
some timeline issues.

We know that the tower in Babylon is
built in the 6th century BCE.

However, in the book of Genesis, it says
that the tower of Babel was built maybe

100 years after the flood, which takes
place in 2350 BCE.

You've got 1 ,600 years there where this
tower should have been built much, much

earlier than the evidence that we have
archaeologically.

If this tower is built in the 6th
century BCE...

That's already well past when you have
civilizations in Greece, China, Europe,

Egypt. And so this can't be the
scattering of people who then establish

civilizations elsewhere because these
civilizations are already going.

Nebuchadnezzar's building of his tower
could be the inspiration for the story

the Tower of Babel, just not at the same
time period. So maybe...

We ought to be looking at additional
places as the potential site of the

of Babel.

One of the most legendary lost places of
the Old Testament, the Tower of Babel,

has long been linked to the ancient city
of Babylon.

Most experts would agree that a ziggurat
or a rising tower was built.

by Nebuchadnezzar II in the 6th century
BCE, and that that building inspired the

story of the Tower of Babel.

But not everyone's convinced.

British Egyptologist David Rawls
proposed in 1998 that the actual

city of Babylon wasn't ancient enough
for that temple to be the temple

in the Book of Genesis as the Tower of
Babel.

For Roll, the chronology issue is a huge
deal. So he begins to think to himself,

all right, who's more ancient than
Babylon?

In southern Mesopotamia, around 2000
BCE, approximately when the Tower of

is supposedly built, there is an ancient
civilization that exists before the

Babylonians, and they're known as the
Sumerians.

Sumeria is credited often... with the
invention of writing.

And now you have a story about the
building of a tower that has

with it a tale about diversity of
peoples exploding onto the scene.

According to this theory, the Tower of
Babel was built by Noah's great

-grandson, a Sumerian king named Nimrod.

Janet? says that Nimrod built this
extremely tall tower in Mesopotamia

to provide an escape in case God floods
the world.

So Nimrod was really trying to work to
obstruct the will of God. This sounds

very similar to the elements in the
Tower of Babel story.

Roll digs deeper, looking for clues.

Roll went out and he pulled the Sumerian
Kings list, which is a document far

older than Babylon itself.

It goes back to the ancient Sumerian
civilization.

And there on the Sumerian Kings list,
Roll finds a king named Enmerkar.

Both Nimrod and Enmerkar are said to
rule around the 3rd millennium BCE, and

both are known as great hunters and
builders.

Some historians think they could be the
very same man.

Enmerkar might not sound anything like
Nimrud, but when we start breaking the

names down, we find a lot of
similarities.

In Sumerian, the word kar, or the
addition of kar, refers to a hunter.

So there we might see a link between
Nimrud, who was the great hunter before

Lord, and Enmer.

When Hebrew was written, it was written
without vowels. And so you just have

consonants. Nimrud's name was N -M -R.

And if you listen to N. Merker and you
take the vowel thought, you end up with

N, M, R, Kerr.

And what's left are three consonants
that are essentially equivalent between

two names.

We're left with two strikingly similar
names. So taking the significance of

language at hand, Roll goes in and looks
at the records of the ancient Sumerian

cities. If the two kings are the same
man, Is it possible that the Tower of

Babel was built not in Babylon, but at
an even older site?

The ancient Sumerians considered Eridu
to be the first city in the world.

It was founded around 5400 BCE, which
would make it thousands of years older

than ancient Babel.

The Sumerian king list cites Eridu as
the city of the birth king.

And it's even said that King Enmerker
was hosted in the city. So it is

that Eridu, not Babylon, is the city
where the Tower of Babel is actually

Archaeologists have come into the site
of Eridu and done some excavating. And

they actually found an incomplete
foundation of a ziggurat that would have

an unprecedentedly large structure.

The ziggurat was abandoned before it was
completed.

Now, had it actually been completed, the
base is so large that the ziggurat

itself would have been taller than any
other building for hundreds of miles

around.

Whatever was built there on this
unfinished foundation would have been

right around the time that the Old
Testament is telling us that the Tower

Babel was constructed.

The theory about Eridu does fit a lot of
the characteristics of the Tower of

Babel. The ziggurat was enormous, and it
fits the right time period,

as well as it was on a major commercial
center, a trade line that would have

brought lots of caravans and workers
from all parts of the known world.

So while the city was quite ancient, it
was on the cutting edge of a new form of

bringing folks of different languages,
ethnicities, and cultures together.

And as we know, even today, sometimes
that brings with it some tension.

According to the Bible, God gets angry
at the tower builders, changes their

language, and drives them apart.

Eridu is eventually deserted.

What happens eventually to Eridu?

It reaches a critical mass to support a
very large population, so gradually the

city is abandoned as people have to move
away, like the story of the Tower of

Babel. By 600 BCE, like so many ancient
cities, it was abandoned, not because of

war, but because it simply ran out of
natural resources to support it.

There's something there that the Bible's
trying to tell us about the ills.

that can take place when you have all of
these different peoples coming

together, trying to be like God.

And so the Tower of Babel story is a
story of God essentially punishing

And the Eridu theory does check a lot of
boxes. However, as far as a general

scholarly consensus, you're rarely going
to find that regarding any Old

Testament topic. And today, the site of
the Tower of Babel remains an ongoing

debate.

The Dead Sea, situated between Israel
and Jordan, is the lowest point on

surface,

1 ,400 feet below sea level.

According to the Old Testament, two
notorious cities once sat along its

Sodom and Gomorrah.

Sodom and Gomorrah, according to the
account in Genesis.

were places of irredeemable evil, so
evil that God himself had no choice but

to destroy them both in fire and
brimstone. However, he let one man, one

man named Lot escape.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah tells
the story of a man named Lot, who's

actually Abraham's nephew.

And Lot is standing outside the gates of
the city, and he meets two strangers

and invites them back to his house for
hospitality.

These two reveal themselves to Lot as
angels. Just about the same time,

a great pounding at the door. There is a
mob that's gathered around his house,

demanding that Lot turn over these
strangers to them to be taken away.

Well, Lot refuses, and that turns out to
be a very wise choice.

And so these angels tell Lot and his
family to leave Sodom and Gomorrah

God is going to destroy these cities
because of their unrighteous behavior.

As they're fleeing, God is so angry with
Sodom and Gomorrah.

for the evil that they have done, that
he rains down fire and brimstone and

completely destroys these cities.

Whatever happened to the people there,
it was sudden and it was devastating.

Is it possible that such a cataclysmic
event actually happened and left

that's traceable today?

One clue is this reference to the five
cities of the plain, two of which are

Sodom and Gomorrah.

The cities of the plain were located
somewhere near the Dead Sea in the

valleys of the Jordan River.

Genesis tells us that as people raced
from Sodom and Gomorrah, some fell into

fiery pits.

For geologists, this southwestern edge
of the Dead Sea is intriguing because of

its rich deposits of a substance called
bitumen.

Bitumen is actually a highly flammable,
tarry, asphalt -like substance.

It was used in warfare. It was also used
to waterproof boats. And it was

harvested off the Dead Sea.

We can look at where bitumen is
available in the Dead Sea Basin to

where Sodom and Gomorrah might have
been.

So in the 1920s, surveys that are done
of the Dead Sea actually reveal there

bitumen pits around the Southern Ant.

In 1973, archaeologists begin excavating
nearby ruins and trying to fit the

puzzle pieces together.

One of the candidates for the city of
Sodom is the city of Babadra. This is on

the southern end of the Dead Sea on the
Jordanian side, and the city dates

somewhere between 3300 and 2000 BCE.

The original name of Babadra is unknown.

But according to some descriptions, it's
thickly walled. It seems to match the

early descriptions of Sodom and Gomorrah
in that they were heavily walled.

Underneath Babadrak, there are the
remains of a city, including a 22 -foot

wall. The encompassing area of this wall
is about 10 acres.

The ruins there at Babi Dra showed that
the city had once had a giant, heavily

fortified gate that from all appearances
seemed to have been destroyed by fire.

And the heavily fortified gate certainly
catch our attention because, well,

that's where the biblical story starts,
with lots at very similar city gates

welcoming in these travelers.

The excavations revealed that it wasn't
just the city gates.

Much of the city had been completely
leveled by some sort of catastrophe.

There was a very, very thick layer of
ash everywhere.

There were bodies that were trapped in
these collapsed buildings.

So something very, very bad happened in
the city.

There on the Dead Sea are two geological
fault lines.

So some archaeologists have speculated
that perhaps... What happened to the

story of Sodom and Gomorrah was you had
an earthquake that ruptured these

bitumen pits underground, forced the
bitumen up to the surface where, when

exposed to air, it becomes flammable,
and that something triggered an

of this newly ruptured bitumen.

So if you've got cities sitting on the
Dead Sea where earthquakes take place at

pretty regular intervals, you can
imagine how a story of a great fire, a

punishment from God, could be remembered
from generation to generation and

appears to match the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah.

And there may be more to the story.

One of the issues here with securely
identifying Sodom and Gomorrah with

cities is the problem of the timeline.

It says in the book of Genesis that this
takes place when Abraham is about 100

years old. But this destruction would
have taken place maybe 350 years before

Abraham was even born.

Even though we have chronologies that
don't line up, oftentimes that can be a

result of oral traditions and oral
storytelling.

However, it's possible that we're just
looking in the wrong place.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is
one of the most violent scenes in the

Old Testament.

Apocalyptic destruction, mass
casualties, whole cities swallowed by

Given the scale of the damage,
archaeologists and historians have

wreckage to pinpoint the location of
both cities.

Today, they are finally getting close.

One of the clues in the story itself
that helps us to know where Sodom and

Gomorrah and the other cities of the
plain are is that we are told that Lot

in Bethel, looking out over the cities
of the plain.

Bethel is a city that's about 10 miles
north of Jerusalem. It's at about 3 ,000

feet elevation.

And it's a city that was well -known in
the Bible, mentioned 60 times in the Old

Testament.

For a long time, archaeologists and
biblical scholars thought that Sodom and

Gomorrah must be somewhere on the
southern end of the Dead Sea.

So in 2001, an archaeologist known as
Dr. Stephen Collins decides that he's

going to go to Bethel, and he is going
to, like Lot, look out and see what he

can see.

He looked down and said, I can't see the
south side of the Dead Sea from Bethel,

so maybe I should go looking on the
north side of the Dead Sea and see

or not there's a candidate for Sodom and
Gomorrah there.

In 2005,

Stephen Collins begins digging in the
northern part of the Dead Sea, a site

called Tal al -Hammam, in a valley.

where the Jordan River flows into the
Dead Sea.

Now, Tal al -Hammam is an ideal place
for a city. It's on this luscious

pasturing land on the northeastern shore
of the Dead Sea.

So Dr. Collins begins his excavations
there, and he begins to find a structure

that turns into a city that dates to
about 2000 BCE.

And this leads many scholars, including
Dr.

Collins.

to suggest that maybe Tal al -Hammam is
the biblical city of Sodom and Gomorrah.

He discovers that there's a gate and 50
-foot towers.

This corresponds with the biblical
account of Lot meeting the

angels at Sodom at the gateway to the
city.

Digging deeper into the remains of this
ancient city, Cullens finds that there

are a lot of collapsed buildings, a lot
of skeletal remains.

Things start to get really dark.

It looks like almost everyone in this
ancient city may have been burned alive.

The dig team uncovers pottery fragments,
the surface of which are basically

glass, which meant that these were
subjected to heat of immense

In excess of 2 ,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

And the kilns of that period could not
produce heat like that. It really was

just like volcanic glass.

And to achieve that effect, you have to
basically expose this material to these

incredibly intense bursts of heat.

One of the things that instantly comes
to mind when you think of that kind of

heat would be a volcano.

Problem is, there are absolutely no
volcanoes in this particular area.

Some theorize that whatever happened
here actually came from out of this

in the form of a meteor.

Granted, there's no meteor crater in the
area, but a meteor can break up to the

point of exploding.

The airburst theory means that the
meteor doesn't actually have to hit the

ground. It can break up in the air, and
the heat...

generated by this breakup is enough to
incinerate everything beneath him. Maybe

this is what the ancient people saw and
understood to be destruction of Sodom

and Gomorrah at the hands of God with
fire and brimstone.

So according to the biblical chronology,
Sodom and Gomorrah would have to be

destroyed between 2100 and 1700 BCE.

And Tal al -Hammam's destruction is
dated at around 1600 BCE.

So not an exact match, but closer.

Finding these places, like the Tower of
Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, serves two

purposes. One, it can help to confirm
people's faith.

But secondly, it helps us to sort of
link humanity to its ancient history.

And it's not just about buildings and
cities that are located in the biblical

past. There are entire landforms waiting
to be found as well.

There's no place more sacred in the Old
Testament than Mount Sinai, where God

first spoke to Moses through the burning
bush and later gave him the Ten

Commandments.

But this holy mountain can't be found on
any map.

People want to find historical
locations, specifically biblical

because it helps them with their faith.

If I can walk in the place that Moses
walked, it gives me the feeling that

these people were real and that what
they did was real.

The dispute over the location of Mount
Sinai goes back to when Christian

pilgrims built a monastery at the foot
of Mount Serbal in the Sinai Desert.

And while they believed that this was
the location of Mount Sinai, others have

questioned this location because it
doesn't exactly match with what it says

the Book of Exodus.

There are actually thousands of
mountains on the Sinai Peninsula.

So which one?

is actually Mount Sinai, is anybody's
guess.

Part of the confusion about where Mount
Sinai is is that we don't know exactly

where the Israelites went after they
fled Egypt.

They wandered for 40 years, and we don't
know exactly what their route would

have been.

The Book of Exodus tells us that Moses
and the Israelites wandered for three

months from Egypt to get to this
particular site.

The second clue is that it is a 14 -day
journey.

from a city known as Elim to Mount
Sinai.

And it also says it's an 11 -day journey
to reach an oasis known as Kadesh

Barnea.

Based on these distances indicated in
the Bible, in the book of Exodus, some

researchers say that the location of
Mount Sinai should be somewhere on the

eastern edge of the Sinai Peninsula,
which borders the Gulf of Aqaba.

And it turns out there is a place just
like that.

The Bible also gives us clues in the
story of the burning bush.

The first clue being that Moses was
there with his father -in -law, and

few dozen miles of his father -in -law's
Midianite camp would have been the

place where Moses would have encountered
God in the form of the burning bush.

So, if we can find the Midianite camp,
we can find the actual site of Mount

Sinai.

According to the book of Exodus, Moses
was tending to his goats when he saw the

burning bush.

And because goats don't normally graze
more than 30 miles from home, it's

believed that Mount Sinai must not have
been very far away.

In the 1960s, an Israeli archaeologist
actually finds some Midianite relics in

this valley north of the Gulf of Aqaba.

So if that's where the goats are from,
and we go out 30 miles from there in a

radius, we might be able to actually
locate Mount Sinai in Egypt.

One possible candidate is a mountain
called Hashem -el -Tarif.

That mountain is 2 ,890 feet high, which
is about as high as described in

Exodus. It also has a large plateau at
its base, because according to Exodus,

the Israelites were gathered on a
plateau while Moses went to the top of

Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments
from God.

There's also a scene in the book of
Exodus where the Israelites are very

thirsty, and Moses comes down and he
strikes at rocks with his staff.

and fresh water springs out of the
ground.

The site now doesn't have any spring,
but excavators have found traces of

calcium deposits there in the area,
which indicates that at some point

there was a spring.

It's also been discovered that there are
a number of sacred structures and

artifacts in this particular area.

that shows that there were probably
religious rites or rituals that took

on this site, so it seems to have been
regarded as sacred.

Finding Mount Sinai has long been a
quest by archaeologists and biblical

scholars because of its important role
in the Old Testament.

Some experts think it may indeed have
been a place of awesome power.

Mount Sinai is considered one of the
holiest places in the Old Testament, and

the Bible describes it in vivid and awe
-inspiring terms.

In the book of Exodus, Mount Sinai is
described as being wrapped in smoke

because God has descended fire upon it.
It also says that Mount Sinai shakes and

there are the sounds of trumpets at its
summit.

We also get... a third description of
Mount Sinai, and it says in the book of

Judges that Mount Sinai melted in the
presence of God.

Based on that description, there may be
more to this famous peak than meets the

eye.

It's written that Mount Sinai blazed
with fire that reached up into the

This is far from the way the Bible
describes most mountains.

Smoke, heat, shaking, fire.

These descriptors all make Mount Sinai
appear to be more of a volcano.

Problem is, there are no volcanoes
located on the Sinai Peninsula. However,

there is one that's not too far away
from that location.

In order to believe this theory, you
have to accept that the Israelites...

actually moved much farther east, out of
the Sinai Peninsula and into what is

today Saudi Arabia.

For a long time, archaeologists and
biblical scholars thought that Moses and

Israelites crossed at the northern part
of the Red Sea up across the Gulf of

Suez. However, this theory suggests that
they traveled eastward and they crossed

over the Gulf of Aqaba through a place
called Etam.

While the traditional biblical account
says that the children of Israel passed

through Etham twice, some have
speculated that maybe there were two

Etham, one on the east side of the Gulf
of Aqaba and one on the west side.

If Moses and his followers crossed the
Gulf of Aqaba, this takes them, in fact,

into the Arabian Peninsula.

So if Mount Sinai actually was a
volcano,

then we would expect to try to find it
in the Arabian Peninsula. And in fact,

there are dormant volcanoes in the
Arabian Peninsula.

Could volcanic activity also explain the
account in Exodus of how God guided the

Israelites through the desert?

The Bible says that the Hebrews were led
by a pillar of cloud by day and a

pillar of fire by night. Now, the most
logical explanation for this is a

volcano. that would be emitting both a
fire that you could see in the evening

and smoke that you could see during the
day. That's what's leading you to Mount

Sinai.

According to the Old Testament, Mount
Sinai is 11 days away from an oasis

as Kadesh Barnea, which is where Moses
and the Israelites camped on their

journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.

An 11 -day journey would be roughly 200
miles, and some scholars have drawn a

200 -mile circumference around Kadesh
Barnea looking for any potential

that could fall within that radius.

And sure enough, there are a few
candidates.

According to the findings, there were
three volcanoes that would have been

active during Moses' time, but only one,
Halal Abadar, would have been powerful

enough to be seen from where the Hebrews
were.

The eruption certainly would have been
visible. The smoke would have been at

least three miles above the volcano.

The imagery of a volcano with the fire,
with the smoke, really does fit the

accounts in the Hebrew Bible.

And the resemblance doesn't end there.

At the base of the volcano, there is
also a very flat plateau, and there's a

sort of a freshwater spring there.

So these details seem to line up pretty
nicely.

with what we find in the book of Exodus.

Identifying the actual location of Mount
Sinai or Sodom and Gomorrah, any of

these ancient lost cities, isn't going
to make believers out of unbelievers,

it is going to at least make more real
some of these stories that we find in

Old Testament.

There is evidence that there probably
was a Tower of Babel, that there were

ancient cities that we have called Sodom
and Gomorrah that probably existed.

Now, how these stories continue to be
told or shaped is one thing, but what we

do know is that many of them, if not
most of them, are rooted in history.

With the Old Testament, so much of it is
so familiar, and certain parts of it

have been uncovered.

But even still, some of these key
places, we still don't know where they

And so those mysteries still persist to
this day.

As biblical experts and archaeologists
continue their quest to find the lost

places of the Old Testament, they
continue to unearth new information

ancient world.

What other secrets can be found hidden
beneath the desert sands? And what will

they reveal about the Old Testament's
most legendary figures?

Only time will tell.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for
watching History's Greatest Mysteries.