Original subtitles

Ancient biblical scrolls that point to the location of a sacred treasure.

A curious mechanism recovered at the bottom of the sea that was centuries

ahead of its time.

And a shepherd's staff transformed by God that is said to have parted the Red

Sea.

Ancient legends and texts are filled with stories of objects so powerful they

could change the course of history.

Many of these artifacts have been lost for centuries, like the Ark of the

Covenant, but there are some that have actually been found.

Certain relics are believed to hold the energy of great spiritual leaders, while

others are extraordinary feats of engineering.

So what exactly gives these objects their remarkable power?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

Qumran, the British Mandate of Palestine, 1947.

While tending his flock of goats in the rocky hills just northwest of the Dead

Sea, Bedouin shepherd Mohamed Edib spies the entrance to a long

-forgotten cave.

Inside, he finds an assortment of dusty clay jars containing fragments of

parchment and papyrus.

with writing in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

They are the ancient Jewish manuscripts we now call the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible that we have

by a thousand years.

Prior to their discovery, the oldest copies of the Bible that we had were

from about 1100 A.D.

So these scrolls were arguably the greatest discovery of the 20th century.

Over the course of the 10-year excavation project, archaeologists

recovered more than 15,000 scroll fragments from 12 separate caves.

And as scholars painstakingly pieced the writings together, what they deciphered

was a lost history of biblical proportions.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are really fascinating because some of them are

books that didn't make it into the Bible, like the Book of Tobit, the Book

of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch.

So this is a brand new set of other information about the Bible.

The Dead Sea Scrolls fundamentally changed the way we read the Bible

because it shows us that there was another group of sectarian Jews who had

books in their Bible that didn't end up making it into the Hebrew Bible.

And so now we ask the questions, well, why do these guys believe something

that's so different?

And so we probably have just as many new questions now that we've discovered them

than we had before.

The creation of the biblical canons, along with their carefully chosen hiding

places, seems like a clear indication that these manuscripts were considered

very important, at least for as long as time.

and the fragile parchment would allow.

But perhaps the most intriguing discovery of the Qumran desert was an

extraordinarily well-preserved scroll created to endure the test of time,

because this document was intentionally made of copper.

The Copper Scroll is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it's unlike all the others.

It was actually discovered in what's called Cave 3, the third cave around

Qumran. This scroll is entirely written on a sheet of

copper alloy.

It's about eight and a half feet long.

And it had been rolled up after it was engraved in antiquity and set into the

caves.

So this is really an astonishing find.

Obviously, there was a lot of thought into making this particular scroll out

of copper.

They wanted something that could go through all kinds of catastrophes and

still be able to convey the information that it has inside it.

When it was first discovered, the copper scroll was sealed shut by thousands of

years of corrosion, preventing scholars from unraveling the secrets it held

inside.

But in 1955, English archaeologist John Allegro and engineers at the University

of Manchester were able to carefully cut the scroll into sections and reveal its

ancient Hebrew inscriptions.

What Allegro discovered was nothing short of astonishing.

His translations revealed that the Copper Scroll is actually a treasure

map.

The copper scroll is an inventory of treasure 63 locations of

a massive amount of treasure We're talking like 300

billion dollars worth of treasure in today's money The copper

scroll is a list of locations where one

can expect to find all sorts of riches gold coins

artifacts so many people have viewed it as kind of an ancient

treasure map unfortunately we've not found any treasure associated with the

copper scroll because a lot of the vocabulary is strange and the

geographical places are unknown to us

Instead of ancient scripture, the Copper Scroll lists 63 different treasure

locations in the Judean desert.

But as with any great treasure hunt, there's a hook.

The locations listed on the scroll either no longer exist, are completely

unknown to scholars, or just too vague to figure out.

This is the big mystery about the Copper Scroll. It's very nondescript.

It'll give a location, and then it'll tell you how far down the dig.

For instance, it'll say something like, in the Valley of Acre, under the steps,

to the east, 10 cubits down, and it does this 63

times.

So the question is, where is this place?

But we just don't know.

Could the Copper Scroll lead to a massive fortune buried throughout the

Judean desert?

It's an incredible notion.

But if it is true, then where did this treasure come from?

When you look at the treasure inventory in the Copper Scroll, and it describes

like 160 tons of gold and silver, you have to be thinking about who would have

160 tons of gold and silver?

The only place that would have that is Solomon's temple.

And so the idea is that is this a list of the treasure of the temple?

Because the temple, of course, has gold and silver.

What about the things in the temple, including the most sacred object, the

Ark of the Covenant?

Is potentially the Ark of the Covenant one of the things that is hidden in this

location of treasures?

According to the Hebrew Bible, The sacred chest said to hold the Ten

Commandments stone tablets was once kept in a secret chamber beneath King

Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.

But at some point, the Ark disappeared, and nobody has seen it for thousands of

years.

Could the Copper Scrolls reveal its hidden location?

The idea that the Copper Scroll...

could lead us to, say, the Ark of the Covenant, is a tantalizing, maybe even a

seductive idea.

The Ark of God is probably the most powerful relic in ancient Israel,

and it's reported to have tremendous power.

I guess if somebody finds treasure, then the mystery will be solved. But until

then, it's still in that mysterious realm.

Is the Ark of the Covenant hidden somewhere in the Judean wilderness?

We don't know.

Will copper scrolls unearthed from the Dead Sea point us to the illustrious Ark

of the Covenant?

It's a heavenly thought.

But there's another.

Intriguing object that experts have been trying to decipher.

It's a curious 4,000-year-old device that may actually be the

world's first computer.

The Aegean Sea, 1900.

Just off the coast of the small Greek island of Antikythera, a group of Greek

divers are hunting for sea sponges when they...

come across the remains of an ancient shipwreck.

What they'd discovered was the wreck of a Roman-era trading ship.

And soon it was apparent that there was a lot of archaeological stuff on board.

And during the years 1900 to 1902, a major expedition was mounted from

Greece to pull up everything they could find.

There were statues,

there were marbles.

Beautiful glassware and it was clear from what else was on this ship that

this was a ship that had gone down in the classical era Dozens of priceless

artifacts were salvaged from the wreckage including one object that

defied explanation It was the remains of a coral encrusted wooden and bronze

box that curiously Looked like a clock

They looked, and there were gear wheels inside this bronze.

It was obvious from the rest of the stuff on the rack that this was from the

classical world, but the gear wheels were not known from the classical world.

And it was then that they realized that this particular piece of bronze was

something special.

The artifact was sent to the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens.

Archaeologists dated it to the 2nd century BC.

along with the other relics found in the wreck, but they were unable to determine

what function the geared object served.

For more than 50 years, its purpose remained a mystery.

But in 1951, British physicist Derek John de Sala Price began a careful

examination of the artifact and found something astonishing.

The box contained the workings of a highly sophisticated device.

By this point, the mechanism was in a bunch of different pieces.

There are seven major fragments labeled A through G, and there are 75

other smaller fragments.

Derek DeSola Price took a renewed interest in the mechanism, and he

was able to put the major fragments

into their correct position for the first time.

The Antikythera mechanism, as it became known, is made predominantly of bronze.

It would probably have been in a wooden case originally, possibly with bronze

plates on the front and the back.

It was about the size of a shoebox, essentially.

There are two main displays.

There's the front face and the back face, and probably a handle on the side

that you would have turned in order to make the thing work.

On the front of the mechanism, there's something looking rather like a clock

face would be the best way to describe it.

In June 1959, Price published his findings in the journal Scientific

American and described the Antikythera mechanism as being an ancient Greek

computer.

This was a spectacular device.

It's an analog computer.

It doesn't use digital. It uses wheels and gears.

This was a device that we wouldn't see again for another 2,000 years until the

1800s.

But if the Antikythera mechanism really was an ancient computer, then what was

it designed to do?

Well, in 2005, an international team of researchers

known as the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, used cutting-edge

scanning technology to obtain a detailed 3D image of the device's inner workings

for the very first time.

And the results were even more remarkable than anyone could have

imagined.

The X-ray tomography clearly laid out what the gear trains must have been, and

also a complete reading of...

basically all the surviving inscriptions on the device, both inside and out.

And those inscriptions are an instruction book on what the mechanism

is and what it does.

And it's clear from those inscriptions that it was intended that the mechanism

should display the positions of the planets as well as the sun and the moon.

The Antikythera mechanism is an astronomical computing device that also

visualized

the revolutions in the time periods of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets

that were visible in antiquity, which are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and

Saturn.

So via the gear work, it mimics the rotation of the Sun and the Moon and the

planets.

It displays many different things at a given time.

where the planets are in the sky, where the moon is in the sky, what the phase

of the moon is, are there going to be any eclipses this month and so on.

We've done some computer calculations to work out how accurate the device would

have been, taking into account the shape of the teeth, the slop in the gears and

so on.

And the answer is, it shows very accurately the sort of behaviour of

these things.

The Greeks were thinking really deeply.

about the universe how it worked what it means to have a universe that's in some

way mechanical that is predictable the greek

astronomers and philosophers were very interested in explaining the cosmos

the idea is that the stars and the planets and the sun and the moon where

they are in the sky affects what happens to our lives just like the modern

tradition of astrology the ancient people who created the antikythera

mechanism could see the cycles that things occurred and they wanted a way to

actually predict them and that's what this machine did it predicted the future

and it's a brilliant piece of mathematics to this day no one knows who

the ancient genius was that invented the antikythera device or when

and since there is no written record of its creation it is doubtful that we will

ever know for certain but its existence raises an intriguing question

could there be other ancient technologies out there waiting to be

found we think that this is maybe hundreds of years ahead of its time

but what we're missing are all the predecessors that just didn't last that

long. I think there are a huge number of engineering feats that we will never

know about or that we haven't yet discovered.

Who built this mysterious device that appears centuries ahead of its time?

Is it really capable of predicting the future?

As unbelievable as that may sound, it's amazing that an ancient object can

survive over the course of so many centuries.

And the same can be said about a powerful walking stick that is claimed

to have been wielded by Moses himself.

Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, Turkey.

Among the gilded daggers and precious jewels on display here, There are a

number of objects that allegedly date to biblical times.

These include a sword, supposedly used by King David to kill the giant Goliath,

hairs from the beard of the prophet Muhammad, and a wooden rod,

which is claimed to be the actual staff of Moses.

This palace used to be the residence of an Ottoman sultan.

And he was given many precious gifts over the years. And one of the things

that evidently he was given was the staff of Moses.

The staff of Moses is mentioned in association with Moses in the book of

Exodus.

And the first time that we hear about it, it seems to just be a walking stick.

But as time goes by in the story of Exodus, it really seems kind of like a

magic wand.

Could the wooden rod on display in the Topkapi Museum be the actual staff of

Moses? As incredible as it sounds, many people believe the answer is yes.

Which makes the claim even more extraordinary, because according to

biblical tradition, the staff of Moses was imbued with miraculous powers.

The staff of Moses first is used in Exodus chapter 7 when Moses confronts

Pharaoh about letting the Israelites go.

He casts down his staff.

It turns into a serpent.

The second instance it's used is when we have the ten plagues.

And in the first of these plagues, Moses uses the tip of his staff dipped into

the Nile.

and turns denial into a red color like blood

but perhaps the most awesome display of the staff's divine

force occurs in exodus fourteen when moses raises the rod above his head

and parts the red sea

In the Exodus narrative, the Israelites are there at the Red Sea. They're being

chased by the Egyptians.

And God basically says, Moses, take your staff, hold it over the waters, and the

waters will part.

And the minute that the Israelites start walking, the waters of the Red Sea part.

The minute the Egyptians come after them, the waters of the Red Sea collapse

upon them.

There's a really interesting question of, you know, if you have this staff,

does the staff in and of itself have this power? Or is the staff sort of a

vessel or a vehicle through which the power of God works? And you need God's

hand behind this.

Is it possible that the unassuming wooden rod displayed in the Topkapi

Museum is the same staff that Moses used to free the Israelites?

Well, it may come as no surprise that many experts doubt its authenticity.

It is simply not possible to follow the provenance of the staff of Moses.

And the staff that is in the museum in Istanbul, there's just no way,

there's just no way of authenticating this as the staff of Moses.

All we have is legend and tradition.

One real mystery is that we don't know what happens to the staff after the end

of Moses.

One story is that it gets passed down through the Davidic line.

King David has the staff. He uses it as a scepter. At that point, we kind of

lose sight of it.

If it's true that the mystical artifact disappeared from history, then what

happened to it?

Author and relic hunter Graham Phillips has a theory. He's been researching the

staff of Moses for decades.

And, according to his research, there's a wooden rod in the Birmingham Museum in

England that was said to be found in the ancient tomb where Moses was supposedly

laid to rest.

We're told that Moses was buried at a place called Petra.

So, somewhere in Petra, in this valley, there's something there called the Snake

Monument, and it dates from the right time, from Moses' period.

And in the middle of the 19th century, a couple of archaeologists went there,

excavated a cave beneath it, and believed that they had found the tomb of

Moses.

The problem was there was no body in it. It had been robbed at some point. But

there was, all covered in dust and debris, a staff.

Eventually, this staff ended up in the Birmingham Museum.

And there, in this glass case, was this staff exactly as described by these guys

who'd found it.

dark-colored, about four feet long, with Egyptian hieroglyphics in white on them.

I couldn't believe it.

According to the Bible, before Moses became a Hebrew leader, he was a prince

of Egypt.

And the hieroglyphics on the Birmingham Museum staff says it belonged to a

member of the royal Egyptian court named Thutmose, a name that bears an

undeniable similarity.

to the legendary prophet Moses.

It says in Egyptian hieroglyphics on this staff, this belongs to

Moses.

So you've got a person whose name could have been Moses, who had been a prince

in Egypt.

I mean, if that's not Moses' staff, I don't know what is.

Has the...

Legendary staff of Moses really withstood the ravages of time and is now

sitting in a museum display?

If so, how amazing is that?

But there's an equally fascinating object found in India, a looming metal

monument that after nearly a thousand years shows no signs of corrosion. It's

called the Iron Pillar.

The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France.

Built in 1889 as an homage to the industrial strength of France, this

striking achievement in metalworks has held its iconic stance in the City of

Light for nearly 150 years.

Once the tallest structure in the world, the Eiffel Tower has endured, in part,

due to a fresh coat of paint that's applied every seven years. To protect

the structure from rust, and corrosion.

And 4,000 miles away in India, on the southern fringe of New Delhi, stands

another tall iron monument.

But this soaring column presents one of the greatest mysteries in ancient

metallurgy.

It's called the Iron Pillar of Delhi.

The iron pillar of Delhi is located within a religious complex

that was originally constructed as a Hindu temple to the god Vishnu.

It's obviously made of iron, but it has not corroded in any way.

And yet it has stood in its current position for at least 800 years. And

before that, elsewhere for another several hundred years where it

originally stood in the Madhra Pradesh region of India it would almost seem as

if a new technique was invented to preserve it from corrosion for thousands

of years and so far it has quite literally done that job so What is the

secret? Why has this iron not corroded in a way which iron normally does?

So this would seem to be a technology that was completely lost, because if it

wasn't lost, we'd have been using it to die.

So how did ancient people invent iron that doesn't rust?

India's humid climate is supposed to accelerate the process of corrosion.

And the iron pillar's cryptic ancient ordinance only make this miraculous

invention even more confounding.

What we have here is a pillar that was originally created to

be special.

It was put there in pride of place, very close to this huge

minaret tower.

The Minaret Tower is 238 feet tall, and the iron

pillar is 23 feet 8 inches, which is exactly

one-tenth of the tower, showing that there is some kind of relationship

between the two.

But what it is remains a true mystery.

We really do not know who this iron pillar belongs to or who built it.

There are inscriptions on the pillar itself.

It is attributed to King Chandragupta, and he ruled

around 4th to 5th century CE.

But there is also controversy about that name because there is only name Chandra

on the pillar.

It does not say Chandragupta.

So it could also mean another king called Ramachandra, which is a legendary

king.

And if it is true, then that goes back to some 12,000 BCE.

The true age of the iron pillar is a matter of debate.

But if it really does date back to 12,000 BCE, that would mean it was

forged 10,000 years before iron was even discovered.

And while many believe the structure is more likely 1,600 years old, what can

explain the lack of corrosion and rust?

How was this achieved?

In 2003, scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology performed an

analysis on the iron pillar in an attempt to find some answers.

Scientists have analyzed...

All the elements that went into building this iron pillar, they found it is 98%

iron, and one part is phosphorus.

That has produced what they call miso white.

And the miso white is a kind of film that is coated the pillar. That is what

protects from corrosion and rust.

The Delhi iron pillar.

is the evidence of lost technology.

No one has been able to replicate the same iron pillar.

Rust slowly starts eating into iron and it can destroy anything.

This is how iron and moisture are normally supposed to behave.

But the iron pillar of India does something very, very different. When

moisture comes into contact with The iron pillar, it basically converts

that moisture into a very unique compound, forming a protective coating,

making it even more resistant to rusting.

The remarkable theory that the ancient column creates its own protective layer

to shield it from the elements begs the question, how did the ancient inventors

do it?

Iron is a major element for bridges and buildings, and eventually, you know,

they catch corrosion and they rust, and eventually they collapse.

And we have seen a lot of examples, you know, around the world.

The builders who built the iron pillar did not leave the knowledge behind other

than the example, which is still standing, but it has not been replicated

by anyone else.

The builder knew the secret formula to make it corrosion-free, but the

knowledge is lost forever.

Did the secret to the iron pillar's construction die with some ancient

alchemist? And why is its incredible composition impossible to replicate even

today? It's a fascinating mystery.

And the same can be said for another powerful object of a very different

kind. It's a sacred relic, protected by the faithful, that is known as

the Buddha's tooth.

Kandy, Sri Lanka.

Nestled on the serene shores of a large lake rests a sprawling Buddhist temple

called the Temple of the Sacred Tooth.

It is known by this unusual name because inside the temple there is an elaborate

shrine which for more than 1500 years has held one of the most important

Buddhist relics in the world.

However, the relic cannot be seen by the public because it is encased within

seven gleaming caskets made out of solid gold.

At the center of those protective layers is a human tooth that, according to the

faithful, belonged to the Buddha himself.

The Buddhist tooth is a sacred relic, and it is venerated three times a day by

Buddhists on the island of Sri Lanka.

It is offered prayers and worship morning, noon, and evening.

Praying to this tooth, it's like being in the presence directly.

of the founder of your religion the historical buddha buddhism was

founded by shakyamuni buddha who lived over 3 000 years ago he was a fully

enlightened being so he attained perfect level of wisdom and his mission was to

teach others how to end their suffering and to continue his teachings after he

was gone upon passing the relics that remained of the buddha were distributed

amongst his followers.

One of them made its way to Sri Lanka in the fourth century, and this was the

Buddha's tooth.

Once a year, there is a massive celebration, the procession of the

tooth.

And this is a humongous festival.

There's music, fire dances.

The Buddhist tooth is carried on the back of a very old noble elephants The

pageantry is just overwhelmingly beautiful at this very large festival

That takes place once a year in honor of the sacred tooth

Although most practicing Buddhists are not allowed to see the sacred tooth They

genuinely believe that it retains the life essence of the Buddha himself

In fact, some people claim that being in the presence of this tiny relic is an

extraordinary experience.

The sacred tooth, it has the power, allegedly, to heal anyone who comes in

contact with it.

There's the weekly ritual in which it's bathed, and the water is then

distributed to people in order to cure them of various illnesses.

Many people have experienced powerful energy, positive energy from the

Buddha's tooth.

It's a phenomenon that inspires people's faith.

As Buddhists, we believe that the Buddha is still in the world.

The sacred tooth that is kept in Sri Lanka is incredible, but it is hardly

the only relic of its kind.

In fact, there are reportedly more than 80,000 small fragments of the Buddha's

remains that are kept in shrines all over the world.

One of the biggest collections of Buddha relics can be found at the Way Mountain

Temple, located in Rosemead, California, which houses some 10,000

relics of the Buddha.

At Way Mountain Temple, we have a finger bone of the Buddha, as well as a

wrist bone and a knee bone from the Buddha.

We make these relics available for people to benefit from being in their

presence.

Wei Mountain temples collection also includes a tooth of the Buddha that can

be seen by the public on special occasions and appears to possess an

extraordinary quality Because even though the Buddha died thousands of

years ago this tooth is actually growing

This tooth is of immense size Today, it is over

three inches in length.

And allegedly, across the past 3,000 years, it's been growing and is

continuing to grow to this day.

Now, this in itself is surely a miracle.

The tooth relic has been growing since the time of the Buddha.

It's well known among Buddhists that the relics can multiply and grow. These are

not dead objects.

They're actually still living. They're still part of the Buddha's body.

According to current measurements, this Buddha's tooth is more than twice the

size of a normal human tooth.

But what could be causing this unusual growth?

Well, in 2012, a group of scientists conducted an experiment to try and find

out whether mysterious relics of the Buddha have any unusual characteristics.

This study attempted to measure the power of Buddha relics on reality.

And so they placed a vessel of water next to some Buddha relics.

And lo and behold, the pH of the water actually changed. And it went up by

2.5 units, which is significant.

Now, are these relics actually imbued with sacred power?

This is a hard question to answer, but whether that's a result of their faith

or a result of the actual sacred relic, the effects are still there.

Grotta Ferrata Necropolis, Rome, the year 2000.

Archaeologists unearth the mummified remains of a Roman noblewoman and her 18

-year-old son.

They're on the woman's hand.

is a 2,000-year-old ring with a remarkably lifelike portrait of her

beloved son.

This very unique ring, it's set in gold, and it's got a crystal. It's a cabochon

crystal, which means that instead of being fasted, like you might see with a

gemstone, it's been polished smooth.

And it has inside a likeness of her son that is remarkably like a modern

hologram. And it really gives that feeling that this ring is magic.

Modern holograms are advanced three-dimensional images created by

projecting light, often by laser beams.

Rudimentary hologram technology wasn't invented until 1948 by the Hungarian

physicist Denis Gabor.

So how was this holographic ring created almost 2,000 years ago?

It's often called a hologram ring. It's not a hologram, of course.

But it follows the same idea that you're actually seeing a 3D image.

Crystals refract light in interesting ways.

And the artisanship behind this was really fabulous, to be able to put a

reflective face in the back.

This is what gives it its kind of eerie 3D effect.

And this is the only example of this that we currently have.

The ring certainly leads you to wonder, was this just one technology, one

person, and then it was lost?

But it also leads to the strange idea, why is there only one of them? It almost

feels as if, I mean, who was this artist? Why didn't the artist make more

of them?

How did the artist find this skill that no one else had found?

And why was it only used in one place?

Someone could probably try to duplicate it today, but maybe this was this piece

of technology from someone who was very special in their art and who's gone.

We may never know who created the holographic ring.

or how exactly they fashioned this intricate relic. But its mere existence

is proof that the inventors of the ancient world were capable of far more

than we give them credit for.

It's always a fascinating moment in archaeology when we realize how advanced

some of the techniques and the knowledge were from some of these ancient

civilizations.

I think a big part of the puzzle is we'll understand where we get our

knowledge from.

But we look back at some of these amazing inventions, these displays of

knowledge, and we have a hard time imagining, before science, before

universities, how did these societies build all of this body of knowledge?

When you think of modern technology, we say to ourselves, yeah, we invented

that. Yeah, we're the ones who pioneered this breakthrough in technology.

And then we realize there were antecedents.

There were other versions of this very same technology that the ancients were

toying with.

When you begin to understand the technology of the ancients, begin to

realize the ancients had their own wisdom, a wisdom that is parallel to the

wisdom of today.

Do certain objects really possess special powers or contain divine energy?

And do the remarkably engineered relics we have found offer any clues about how

technically advanced our ancient ancestors were?

Who created these amazing wonders?

How did they survive the test of time?

And is it within our ability to truly understand them?

Well, now the answers to these questions continue to fascinate us and remain.

I've explained.