Original subtitles

Mastrelli: Jonah, the prophet swallowed by a whale,

Who then confronts a wicked king.

His story is so bizarre

It seems it could never have happened.

But now, from the ruins of war,

In a labyrinth of tunnels, come shocking new discoveries

That take scholars back to this old testament story

And plunges them deep into an ancient world

Of violence and sex.

These extraordinary discoveries could finally reveal

The truth behind one of the bible's greatest

And strangest stories,

The tale of jonah and the whale.

For centuries, the mysteries of the past

Have kept their secrets.

But there are clues, cast in gold, etched in stone,

Written in blood.

We can unlock them.

(dramatic music)

Mesopotamia.

The cradle of civilization

And the setting for at least a dozen biblical stories,

Including one of the most famous and strangest tales of all,

The story of jonah and the whale,

Where a prophet endures incredible hardship

To warn an ancient city to change its wicked ways.

That ancient city was nineveh.

Now it's mosul, in northern iraq.

It's here, many believe, that jonah was buried.

For at least 1,000 years, pilgrims from three

Of the world's major religions have traveled to mosul

To visit jonah's tomb and shrine.

It's known as nebi yunus.

Schiffman: Now the prophet jonah is in the hebrew scriptures

Known as the old testament,

It is mentioned in the new testament,

And is mentioned in the koran as well under the name yunus.

And therefore it seems that for jews, christians,

And muslims, this was a holy site.

Mastrelli: In the bible, god commands jonah

To travel to the city of nineveh

To warn its citizens that they will be punished

For their sinful ways.

Schiffman: This prophet was commanded

By god to go to nineveh

But he decided he wasn't going.

Mastrelli: Jonah ignores god's command.

He sets sail in the opposite direction.

Schiffman: He goes on a ship

In order to avoid the role that god has given him,

And what happens is that there's a tremendous storm.

Mastrelli: Jonah is thrown overboard.

For three days and nights,

He languishes inside a great fish

Until he repents and is spat out on the shore.

Finally, jonah goes to nineveh

And delivers his warning to the king and his citizens.

Schiffman: He gives his prophecy including to the king

And all the people and they all repent.

Mastrelli: It's one of the old testament's most famous

And most puzzling stories.

Now archeologists have a chance to investigate the place

Where many believe jonah was buried

And where he may have warned the sinful king of nineveh.

It's an opportunity borne out

Of the horror and destruction of war.

In June 2014, isis occupied mosul.

One month later, on July 24th,

They obliterated jonah's shrine.

And archeologists' worst fears were realized.

Machinist: Years to build but one minute to destroy.

Dalley: It was terrible of course,

Terrible for people, terrible for antiquities.

Ugh.

Hanson: This was to demonstrate their power over the landscape

And also their effort to rewrite history.

Mastrelli: Using satellite imagery,

Archeologist kathryn hanson recorded

And analyzed the destruction.

Hanson: So, we're starting with the 19th of July

And you can see the shrine looks like it always has,

It's still there.

But by the 30th of July,

You can see it's very clearly reduced

To a pile of gray rubble.

Mastrelli: Iraqi archeologist ali al-juboori

Of mosul university was one of the first

To visit the site after its destruction.

Juboori: It was July 24th when they blown up the mosque.

I went the next day.

I couldn't see anything, only ruins.

Every stone of the culture is very important,

It's part of our cultural heritage.

So, this destruction, it has nothing to do with religion.

It's beyond my ability just to describe what's going on.

Mastrelli: But in a twist of fate,

The obliteration of nebi yunis wasn't the end of the story.

It was the beginning of a whole new chapter

That could finally reveal the true story

Behind the biblical tale of jonah and the whale.

Dalley: It is rather ironic that you see isil trying apparently

To destroy the ancient culture,

But in fact they have revealed a bit more

Of what really interests us.

Mastrelli: 2 1/2 years after the shrine's destruction,

Isis is forced out of mosul,

Leaving archeologists free

To examine the ruins more closely.

Beneath what was once jonah's shrine,

They make an astonishing discovery,

A labyrinth of tunnels leading

To a strange subterranean landscape.

Juboori: After the liberation of east of mosul,

The army and some of the archeologists went up there

And they found they had dug four tunnels.

Each tunnel, when you get inside,

It will be divided into many tunnels.

Mastrelli: Isis dug these tunnels deep into the mound

In search of buried treasure.

Juboori: The looters were looking for the things

Which were easy to be carried.

The things which they cannot carry, they left it behind.

Mastrelli: And it's what they left behind

That has stunned the world of archeology.

When isis blew up the tomb of jonah in 2014,

It was not an isolated event.

It was just the beginning.

They waged a war not only against non-believers

But also against 6,000 years of culture in iraq and syria.

Today, the tomb they sought to destroy,

Thanks to its newly-revealed lower chambers,

Is now a testament to the enduring power of history

In this ravaged corner of the world.

Dalley: I've never seen anything like these characters

That are in the tunnels on the sculptures,

And as far as I know there is no parallel for it.

Mastrelli: As archeologists examine the carvings

And inscriptions, it's clear they were made

By one of the ancient world's greatest empires,

A civilization that looms large

In the old testament book of jonah,

The assyrians.

Schiffman: No question that what happened in this place

And the archeology of this place is very important

For understanding the bible

And by the way,

For understanding the story of jonah.

Hanson: These are structures that come from a civilization

That was an empire before there were empires.

Mastrelli: By 671 bc, the assyrian empire stretched

From turkey in the north to egypt in the south.

Hanson: This was the first real empire

That controlled the entirety of the middle east.

If you think about it,

It's basically rome before there was rome.

Mastrelli: To their neighbors and rivals,

The assyrians' riches and ruthless lust for power

Made them public enemy number one,

A reputation the assyrians themselves seemed to relish.

Machinist: Certainly, in the assyrian royal inscriptions

There's a certain focus on what happens

To enemies who don't obey.

They can be flayed, their skin pulled off of them.

There's this piling up of the heads

Of the enemy in pyramids.

Schiffman:The assyrians' own documents

Tell us they murdered people,

They exiled populations.

The reality is that they provided their own bad press.

Mastrelli: This image as the bad guys

Of the biblical world dominates the old testament

And the book of jonah.

Schiffman: This major, major empire is a major part

Of our ancient history and our biblical history.

Mastrelli: At the heart of this vast empire

Sat the largest city of its time, nineveh.

It was once the capital of the assyrian world.

It features heavily in the book of jonah

And, to millions of believers around the world,

It's the burial place of jonah himself.

If archeologists are going to discover jonah's true story,

Nineveh is where they'll find it.

A city ruled over by an immensely

Rich and powerful king.

Dalley: Nineveh was packed with palaces and temples

And surrounded by walls and moats

And then bridges and gardens.

Hanson: You'd come into a palace

That was massive reliefs of stone

With images carved on the sides of them

And painted in bright colors.

And it was all designed

To demonstrate how much power the king had.

Mastrelli: But what is the structure

That archeologists have discovered at nebi yunis?

Deep beneath jonah's shrine,

They're uncovering a critical and monumental clue.

Two immense statues.

They're the lower halves of colossal winged bulls,

So huge their upper bodies are still buried

In the earth above.

Half-man, half-beast, these are lamassu.

Iconic assyrian divinities,

They symbolize power and offer protection.

It's a discovery of global importance.

Hanson: Seeing a lamassu in the wild is really different

Than seeing a plaster cast of it like we have here.

You can better understand the assyrian experience

With a lamassu if you're able to see it

In its original place.

Mastrelli: Only the most important of assyrian buildings

Were guarded by lamassu,

So their discovery beneath nebi yunis reveals

This was once a great center of power.

Dalley: It's very interesting to find

That the tunnels have got winged bulls,

Because this is the mark of a proper palace building

And it wouldn't be found in just any old building.

Mastrelli: The presence of lamassu suggest

There was a palace here

And that it dates back at least 2 1/2 thousand years,

To the time of the old testament,

When it's said jonah traveled to this city

And spoke to its king.

Voice of god: Jonah began to enter into the city

And cried "yet 40 days and nineveh shall be overthrown."

Mastrelli: There was a palace here in biblical times.

So was this also the palace that some believe jonah visited

To warn its wicked king to repent, or die?

In mosul, iraq, beneath the ruined tomb

Of the old testament prophet jonah,

Archeologists have discovered the remains

Of an ancient assyrian palace.

Ali al-jubouri of the university of mosul

Has translated the inscriptions from the tunnels.

Jaboori: The palace of esarhaddon,

Mighty king, king of the world,

King of assyria, rebuilt the asagulih and babylon,

Descendant of sargon, king of assur.

Mastrelli: The palace belonged

To the assyrian king esarhaddon.

But who was he?

Could he be the sinful king

That some believe jonah came to warn?

History tells us he fit the bill.

Dalley: Esarhaddon as the crowned prince,

Falls out with his father.

And his mother, naqi'a, and esarhaddon himself

Organized the murder of naqi'a's husband,

And her son's father.

Mastrelli: As king, esarhaddon ruled his vast empire

With ruthless brutality.

He celebrated his fearsome reputation with grisly carvings.

This engraving shows esarhaddon leading his defeated enemies

Like animals, on a leash.

And he hammered the message home with gruesome inscriptions.

Dalley: "I trampled on the necks of the people of cilicia.

"the corpses of their warriors unburied

"I gave to the wolf to eat.

"I hung the head of sanduarri and abdi-milkutti

"on the shoulders of their nobles.

"and with singing and music I paraded

"through the public square of nineveh."

Mastrelli: Esarhaddon seems the perfect candidate

For the book of jonah's sinful king of nineveh.

And there was more to esarhaddon's wickedness.

He also worshiped deities the bible calls false idols,

Including perhaps the most famous,

And infamous, goddess in history.

Dalley: Every city will have a patron god, or goddess.

In nineveh it was ishtar, the goddess of battle,

As well as love, as well as fertility.

She is a ferocious goddess.

She would sleep with anybody she felt like,

She's into killing people.

She can do anything.

She is the most powerful deity of all.

Mastrelli: This association

With the promiscuous goddess ishtar

Tarnished nineveh's reputation in the eyes of the bible.

In the old testament's book of nahum,

Ishtar and nineveh are linked.

Dalley: Nahum is regarding the city as a woman.

"and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face,

"and I will show the nations thy nakedness

"and the kingdoms thy shame."

So, she is a thoroughly disgraced woman,

Of worst possible repute.

And that's the kind of idea

That stuck to assyria as a place of atrocious sexual habits

And atrocious fornication.

Mastrelli: A metropolis led by a ruthless, violent king

And dedicated to a goddess of sex and war.

The similarities between the book of jonah

And the archeology in these tunnels are striking.

There's a real shrine of jonah, and a real sinful king,

In a real palace, in a real city.

So, were the events in the book of jonah real too?

While the discoveries at nebi yunus seem to fit

With jonah's story, the dates don't.

Though evidence for the historical jonah is bolstered

By the bible's book of kings ii,

That account points to him living in israel

During the eighth century bc,

Long before esarhaddon reigned.

Schiffman: We have evidence there was such a prophet

From second kings.

We also know that there was a city of nineveh

And in fact there's archeological evidence

For that city in the assyrian period.

But actually, that archeological evidence for the city

Is from a somewhat later period

Than the one in which jonah apparently functioned

According to the book of kings.

Mastrelli: Today, many scholars believe

That as the story passed from one generation to the next,

It evolved.

Facts, such as the wealthy city of nineveh,

And fiction, like jonah's three days

Inside the great fish, fused.

Then the writers of the old testament added their own spin,

To create a story that was more symbolic than historic.

Schiffman: We realize on one hand that it's a document,

Which has in it some actual history and actual events.

On the other hand,

Sometimes we have a more symbolic way of writing.

It doesn't really seem that this is to be taken literally.

It rather seems that this is a narrative meant

To teach us some very, very important lessons

About judgment, and mercy, and sin, and repentance.

Mastrelli: So, if there was a historical jonah,

This is not where he was buried.

In fact, at least three other sites

Across the middle east lay claim to the prophet's bones.

Still, jonah's tale of repentance

And its universal appeal endures.

Juboori: Nebi yunus is very important for iraqis

Because it is a heritage from 3,000 years.

Even though it's been destroyed,

The name will continue for the future generations.

Mastrelli: Call it the ultimate irony,

An act of pitiless destruction by a murderous cult,

A cult dedicated to erasing the ancient history

Of iraq and syria, is now allowing archeologists

To wonder again at the story of jonah

And to discover the palace of a mighty assyrian king.