Original subtitles

NARRATOR: The lost city of Kish in modern day Iraq,

the mysterious metropolis at the heart of the cradle

of civilization.

Legends tell of the powerful kings who ruled these lands.

They are some of the first kings in history.

This is an incredible story.

Kish changed the path of history forever.

NARRATOR: A saga of divine power, war, and conquest.

Why does this site have such legendary status?

What can these scorched ruins reveal about

the origins of royalty as we know it?

Kings write, "I have built this, I have done this,

I have conquered this," solidifying their right in

stone and in clay.

NARRATOR: Today, after decades of conflict in this area,

archaeologists have rare access to investigate this

lost city's buried secrets.

They head deep into ancient caves.

This is probably 10,000 years at least.

NARRATOR: Launch a high-resolution drone.

That's really interesting when you see that with the drone.

NARRATOR: And put ancient technology to the test.

To discover the truth about Kish,

we digitally rebuild this revolutionary city,

from its monumental ziggurats

to its war-torn palaces.

We unearth hundreds of human skeletons

and clues of a shocking betrayal

to explore the lost world of the Sumerian kings.

The Iraqi desert -- over 5,000 years ago,

the world's first cities are born here in Mesopotamia,

the land between two rivers.

Legends tell of all-powerful kings

ruling over these vast lands,

the kings of Kish.

Now, 60 miles south of Baghdad,

investigators head into the desert to hunt for the ruins

of the king's capital.

Kish is described as a mighty city.

At its height, it's a sprawling metropolis

that spans 25 million square feet.

In the east sits a fortified palace for

the king's throne, and beside it, a colossal temple complex.

A labyrinth of streets packed with mud

brick houses encircles these impressive landmarks.

In the west is another giant temple complex.

Kish is a legendary capital fit

for some of history's first kings.

Do any of its impressive structures survive?

And can the ruins reveal the truth

about the legends of Kish?

Decades of conflict have kept

archaeologists away from this region.

But now, a pioneering team is on a quest to

explore enormous mounds that could conceal

the king's legendary capital.

Investigators Jeff Allen and Ammar al-Taee

have rare access to the site of Kish.

Our cameras have been granted

special permission to follow them.

Jeff has spent 27 years protecting

ancient sites in war-torn regions,

and Ammar works for the Iraq State Board of Antiquities.

They search for clues of ancient

structures among the sun-scorched ruins.

The first step to understanding the story of Kish

is to look at the evidence that's around us here.

NARRATOR: This vast site is made up of more than 40 mounds

that sprawl across an area

larger than the country of Monaco.

The only way to survey every inch is from the air.

Ammar launches a drone-mounted, high-definition camera

to capture the topography of the landscape in

digital detail.

JEFF: Wow, this is an amazing archaeological site.

-It's enormous. -AMMAR: Yeah.

JEFF: And really what impresses me are these mounds here.

AMMAR: Yeah.

NARRATOR: Two giant mounds, each over 40 feet tall,

stand out among the ruins.

When I see these, I get the impression that one of these

could have been a ziggurat, a pyramid-like structure

rising towards a temple at the top.

NARRATOR: Ammar uses the drone footage to create an accurate

3D model of each mound on the site.

JEFF: Mm-hmm.

NARRATOR: The first mound soars 46 feet high.

It has a clear square shape at its base

and what looks like a tower on top.

NARRATOR: The distinctive profile is proof

this is once a ziggurat,

an iconic temple monument reaching up toward the heavens

and visible for miles around.

Mesopotamian cities typically center around a ziggurat,

like this one

still visible in the nearby city of Ur today.

But the second mound in Kish is more mysterious.

Ammar and Jeff inspect their 3D model.

It's a staggered shape, kind of steps down, yes.

NARRATOR: This mound is 44 feet tall, and its profile reveals

a more gradual uneven slope, which is also consistent with

a ziggurat ruin,

proof of a second ziggurat in Kish.

But right next to this second ziggurat,

they spot yet another intriguing mound.

NARRATOR: It's 26 feet tall,

with a similar staggered profile.

These adjacent mounds reveal something extraordinary

in Kish.

NARRATOR: This discovery of a double ziggurat is remarkable.

It gives Kish a total of three ziggurats, more than any usual

Mesopotamian city.

The enormous size of the city,

plus the fact that it had three ziggurats, suggests to me

that it was an important place.

NARRATOR: The evidence is that Kish matches

the legendary descriptions.

These mounds are once towering temples.

Their cores survive to this day.

Jeff and Ammar want to know how such

a monumental city rises up in the middle of the desert.

Ammar uses experimental archaeology to investigate.

He wants to recreate Kish's bricks.

At a nearby site,

his team experiments with ancient techniques

and materials.

They combine mud and water

and add straw to thicken the mixture.

Then they use a square mold to

shape it and create bricks with uniform dimensions.

NARRATOR: They dry in the hot desert air,

and the result is bricks that hold

together just like the ones that Kish.

Each mud brick can bear 1,700 pounds of weight.

That's strong enough to support the towering ziggurats.

But their ancient recipe reveals the city's

building blocks require a lot of water.

Ammar investigates where the water could come from.

He inspects some exposed original bricks

close up and spots something strange.

NARRATOR: It's a crucial clue to how Kish grows

so large and why it has three towering ziggurats.

The first ziggurat sits at the center of

a small city on the northern bank of the river.

A mile away on the southern bank,

another city develops

with a colossal double ziggurat at its heart.

Over hundreds of years, these two small cities,

each with their own religious center, grow and merge into

the powerful, mega metropolis of Kish.

Is it home to legendary kings?

Stephanie Dalley looks for clues at

the prestigious Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

She is one of just a few people

in the world who can read cuneiform,

the earliest writing system ever discovered.

This cuneiform-covered prism is the 3,800-year-old

Sumerian King List,

a rare record of the world's earliest cities

and their rulers.

Stephanie has special access to examine

the Sumerian King List up close.

She searches for evidence of kings in Kish.

STEPHANIE: This is the first column,

and then that's the second column.

In this list of kings here,

you get the kingship was in Kish.

NARRATOR: The ancient text identifies 39 kings of Kish.

One stands out -- Etana.

Here, we've got Etana.

So he's Etana the Shepherd, who ascended

to heaven and consolidated all the foreign countries.

NARRATOR: Legends written in clay reveal

further clues to this divine intervention.

According to these legends,

the gods choose Etana to rule as king of the earth,

but his pregnant wife cannot give birth to their royal heir.

The one known remedy is the birth plant,

which Etana must bring down from heaven.

Instructed by the solar god, Shamash,

Etana rescues an enormous maimed eagle languishing in a pit.

The eagle carries Etana into heaven to retrieve

the birth plant and secure his royal line.

The Sumerian King List states

Etana reigns an impossible 1,500 years.

Can an intriguing discovery underneath

Kish's double ziggurat shed light

on the truth within these myths?

And can hidden inscriptions reveal if the king

of Kish wields ultimate power over neighboring city states?

NARRATOR: The ancient city of Kish,

home to some of the first kings in history.

But their stories mix fact and fiction.

They do have enormous inconsistencies.

NARRATOR: Stephanie Dalley discovers more potential

mythmaking in the Sumerian King List.

It says the flood came over the earth.

Then kingship was in Kish.

NARRATOR: Evidence of a great flood in Kish would

help establish the reliability of the King List

and bolster its claim about the rise of royalty here.

Archaeologists dig beneath the remains

of the twin ziggurats

and unearth mysterious buildings 20 feet down.

They find a central street lined with houses and alleyways

and human skeletons buried in the homes

underneath the floor -- on top of these ruins lies

a one-foot-thick layer of sediment

filled with pottery fragments and fish bones.

It's evidence of dramatic destruction in Kish.

Could this prove the flood is real?

Today, the ruins beneath the ziggurats are protected.

So now, archaeologists must look for clues elsewhere.

Iraqi-American Mark Altaweel investigates

a remote spot 180 miles away in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Modern conflicts have meant

this area has often been off-limits to archaeologists,

but now, Mark has rare

access to explore its subterranean secrets.

He examines a dark and treacherous

cave concealed beneath the Zagros Mountains.

Mark treks through the darkness for over half a mile.

This cave is a time capsule

that may hold clues to the flood myth.

This is a speleothem.

It is a kind of growing stalagmite.

If you can see, there's water at the very top

and it's dripping.

NARRATOR: The dripping water contains minerals, which

gradually deposit on the cave floor.

Over time, they build up into tall stacks called speleothems.

Mark ventures deeper into the cave.

This is probably 10,000 years at least, given the height.

NARRATOR: The minerals inside these speleothems contain

secrets of the last 10,000 years.

You can retrieve different kinds of chemical data,

which allows you to reconstruct things

like rainfall, ancient rainfall.

This is how we learn about Iraq's ancient climates.

NARRATOR: More rain means more drips,

but a drought means no drips.

So speleothems are an historic record of rainfall.

Mark's team collects samples from the speleothems

and takes them back to the lab.

Then they analyze the minerals'

molecular fingerprints and turn them into data

to reveal the rainfall levels over time.

So you had a very different situation than you do today.

NARRATOR: The data shows that a lot of

rain falls on ancient Iraq,

but the level of rainfall

indicated by these spikes is inconsistent.

The flood story really is, in many ways,

symbolic of the volatility of water in Iraq.

It is a region that can be quite wet

one year and quite dry another year.

So you can foresee with this kind of data,

for instance, you have this all

of a sudden spike of rainfall occurring.

Maybe it was this spike that could have

led to the inspiration of the flood story.

NARRATOR: Mark's data adds to

the destruction layer beneath Kish's ziggurat.

Together, they suggest a great flood at Kish.

The data could explain why the Sumerian King List

claims that kingship in Kish follows the flood.

It reveals a dramatic spike 5,500 years ago,

exactly when the first cities are founded in Mesopotamia.

MARK: All of a sudden, you have basically the wettest period

in Iraq's history,

and it so happens to coincide with the rise of urbanism.

It creates an opportunity, effectively, to develop city.

NARRATOR: But with this thriving civilization comes a problem.

MARK: How do you deal with this sort

of complex issue of organizing people to manage

years of plenty and years of perhaps drought.

NARRATOR: The Euphrates floods so frequently

that ancient Mesopotamians develop an intricate

irrigation system to harness its immense power.

During the yearly summer flood,

they channel water from the river into farmland,

where it helps produce bountiful harvests.

Mesopotamian farmers also developed complex reservoir

systems to regulate water levels during

the floods and store huge quantities of water

for the dry season.

Control of water is the key

to the growth and success of cities.

Leaders who do it well amass

resources and power, and royalty is born.

MARK: So I think the flood story makes a lot of sense.

Certainly, I can see why monarchy evolves out of this.

NARRATOR: The kings of Kish may owe their rise

to the floodwaters,

but the ancient King List describes

them ruling over other Mesopotamian cities.

Is there any truth to this account?

Could a discovery of military propaganda in Kish's

royal palace reveal clues?

NARRATOR: The once flourishing city of Kish

and its powerful kings rise out of dramatic floods.

But the legends say that the kings of

Kish wield power far beyond the city's borders.

Quite often, legends are based on truth,

but over thousands of years, they become twisted.

NARRATOR: Jeff and Ammar want to find

out if there is truth to the legends.

They launch their drone and look for clues of kings at Kish.

Ammar identifies the faint outline of a floor plan.

NARRATOR: These are the remarkable ruins

of an ancient palace.

Kish is home to one of

the earliest royal palaces ever discovered.

Built around 4,600 years ago,

the palace of Kish is

a highly sophisticated and fortified building.

The archaeologists who uncover its ruins imagine that

the palace once has soaring

layered defensive walls and platforms from where soldiers

can launch volleys of projectiles.

Inside the royal wing is a mysterious limestone carving.

It shows the king wielding an ax

and taking prisoners captive.

Is this evidence of a powerful

king of Kish dominating his neighbors?

Sebastien Rey is an expert

on the intricate rivalries of Mesopotamia.

He investigates Lagash,

an ancient city state 130 miles southeast of Kish.

He suspects this site could unlock vital clues

about the extent of Kish's power.

Over 100 years ago, French archaeologists

unearth a curious layer of destruction here.

The French pioneers,

when they opened their excavations,

they found many relics, many objects.

NARRATOR: Now, at the same spot, Sebastien's team

is excavating the ruins of a mysterious temple.

This was the temple dedicated to the main god,

the chief god at the heart of the sacred precinct of Lagash.

NARRATOR: They dig deeper for missing puzzle pieces

that the previous excavators did not find.

New discoveries, together with the objects

uncovered 100 years ago,

allow them to piece together the full story

of what happens here.

Sebastien examines some of the objects

unearthed in Lagash.

He has special access to

the original report from the 19th century excavations.

This is one of the most important objects.

So the two pieces of the stelae were

broken off, and we can see the impact.

NARRATOR: This fragment of stela shows a God

holding a net full of enemy soldiers.

The destruction line literally breaks the area

where the God is holding the net,

and this was done in a symbolic way to free

the soldiers trapped inside the net.

NARRATOR: This break is no accident.

It's carefully crafted by an enemy of Lagash

who wants to cut their soldiers loose.

Sebastien thinks the identity of Lagash's enemy

could be revealed by another intriguing object.

This ancient text is an historical

account of a war in Mesopotamia

that rages from around 2600 BCE.

The text tells of this conflict, going back

to the time of a king of Kish, Mesilim.

NARRATOR: King Mesilim of Kish brokers

an agreement between Lagash and Umma,

neighboring city states who are fighting over

disputed territory.

King Mesilim erects a stone stela to mark a new border.

But Mesilim's peace plan takes a strip of land away from Umma.

Feeling short-changed, Umma breaches the agreement

and blocks the canals

that provide water to Lagash downstream.

Unable to reconcile the dispute,

the cities slip into a war that spans many decades.

The Umma-Lagash border conflict is

the very first conflict known in history.

NARRATOR: Throughout the long war,

both cities claim they are enforcing

the will of King Mesilim.

The reverence paid to Mesilim is

vital evidence of Kish's far-reaching power.

SEBASTIEN: It seems indeed that at the very beginning of

the 3rd millennium, Kish exercised a form of control over

most of Mesopotamia.

We believe that the Sumerian cities

at that time formed a league.

Kish was the overlord of this league.

NARRATOR: Legends of another king of Kish could shed

light on how Kish rises to this overlord status.

According to ancient inscriptions,

King Enmebaragesi of Kish conquers neighboring Elam.

Then, in a city far to the south of Kish, Nippur,

Enmebaragesi builds a temple dedicated

to the God, Enlil.

Enlil is the most powerful god in the Sumerian pantheon,

the supreme embodiment of authority.

By building this temple, Enmebaragesi claims

divine authority, not

just as king of the city of Kish,

but over the entire region.

The tales of Enmebaragesi and Mesilim showed

that the early kings of Kish

exert military and diplomatic power

over a huge area.

This marks a turning point in Mesopotamian history.

Now, one king, the king of Kish, is the king of kings.

Can a groundbreaking discovery in Kish

reveal the true influence of these kings?

And can macabre graves shed light

on a threat to Kish's power?

NARRATOR: Discoveries in the ancient city of Kish

are shedding light on how their pioneering kings

change our world.

JEFF: Kish changed the path of history forever,

like no city state had ever done before.

NARRATOR: 30 feet below ground, archaeologists make

an extraordinary discovery in Kish,

a two-wheeled wooden chariot, preserved for millennia by

the desert sand.

Surrounding it,

the skeletons of oxen and people.

The excavators also unearth a four-wheeled

chariot with donkey and human skeletons.

The remains of a sentry guard the tomb.

They are some of the earliest wheeled vehicles

ever discovered.

They date to the era of Kish's great kings.

Who are the people buried here?

Paul Collins is an expert in Mesopotamian burials.

There's no other find in Mesopotamia

that compares with them.

The early excavators, when they were discovered in the 1920s,

imagine that they might belong to the princes of Kish,

but it remains a debated question of exactly

what these graves represent.

NARRATOR: Paul is on a mission to find out what

these unique chariot burials can reveal about kings in Kish.

He has special access to analyze a precious

clay model of a chariot unearthed

in Kish's royal palace.

This perfect miniature, handcrafted around

4,400 years ago,

reveals how these early chariots are used by Kish's kings.

PAUL: At the very front is a container for the spears,

which you would then hurl at the enemy as the vehicle

trundled over the land.

NARRATOR: Chariots are the chosen weapon

of kings for thousands of years,

and they are buried with them, too.

Kish's kings are quick to adopt

another great innovation of this era -- writing.

Lara Bampfield is an expert

in ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions.

She investigates how writing develops.

She draws the sign "ki."

It represents the word "place" in the Sumerian language.

It's all pictographic at this point.

It's a very rudimentary form of a sign.

NARRATOR: Lara thinks that kings drive the development

of these basic signs into something revolutionary.

She draws to later versions of the "ki" sign in cuneiform.

LARA: These inside four lines have become the inside wedges.

As we move into later variations of the script,

we have a much clearer impressed version on the clay.

NARRATOR: Lara's drawings reveal these pictographic signs

evolved into the world's first writing script, cuneiform.

Lara thinks it develops for political reasons.

Writing is definitely a form of power, and this is very

much seen in Mesopotamia, where kings write scripts

across monumental structures.

"I have built this, I have done this,

I have conquered this," almost highlighting and solidifying

their right in stone and in clay.

NARRATOR: Under the influence of kings,

writing develops into complex literature

that records victory, legend, and the world's first history.

Innovations like writing and chariots are

at the heart of the kings' success,

and the huge reach of the kings of Kish

allows writing to be rolled out across the region.

The ancient Mesopotamians developed

writing and arithmetic.

They're the first to divide the circle into

360 degrees and invent the hour, minute, and the second.

These innovations allow their kings to organize their

work force and mass produce at an unprecedented scale.

Mesopotamians are among the first civilizations to

harness wheel technology.

Kish's kings used chariots to fight wars

and parade their power.

These kings adorn their capital with

new, impressive styles of art and writing,

immortalizing their rule.

Many of these Mesopotamian technologies

are cornerstones of modern civilization.

The kings of Kish use all their tools to

create and secure a society bent to their rule.

But a macabre discovery in Kish may be

a sign of trouble ahead for these early kings.

What can the ruins of

the royal palace reveal about Kish's fate?

NARRATOR: Kish --

the ruins of the city's

three enormous ziggurats still tower over the desert.

But Ammar al-Taee's investigation of the city

reveals that other landmarks are almost completely missing.

Only a handful of bricks remain.

NARRATOR: He heads to the spot where Kish's royal palace

once stands and sees only desert sand and shrubs.

Excavations inside the palace's footprint shed

light on why so little survives.

15 feet below ground,

archaeologists discover 162 human skeletons.

They are all buried in a half fetal position,

with grave goods scattered around them.

Weapons lie by their side -- axes, knives, and blades.

Hidden beneath these graves,

excavators find the shocking ruins of the palace.

Burn marks on the walls suggest

it has been razed to the ground.

Is this evidence of a catastrophe at Kish?

Paul Collins wants to find out why people are buried here.

He has special access to examine

a weapon unearthed in these graves.

Paul instantly recognizes the shape.

So this is an ax head, very typical in shape,

where you have the cutting blade

emerging out of this cylinder of metal, which was

hafted onto a wooden stick.

NARRATOR: But this ax head is a miniature,

much smaller than the axes used as weapons at this time.

It could be it was intended for use on

the journey by the dead person to the next world.

NARRATOR: Ancient Mesopotamians are buried with symbolic weapons

like this so they are armed in the afterlife.

Their burial location on top of

the palace site is deeply meaningful.

These people are honoring the great heritage of

Kish's kings.

Long abandoned, but the memory of this great

palace continued to echo down through the generations.

NARRATOR: The burials spanned decades

after the palace is abandoned.

Stephanie Dalley investigates what happens at

Kish to lead to this tragic scene.

She examines the Sumerian King List again for answers

and spots a strange detail about a man named Sargon.

STEPHANIE: With Sargon, who comes into the King List,

it says that he's a cup bearer to a king in Kish.

NARRATOR: He is entrusted with serving wine

at the king's table.

But later on the list, Sargon is named

as a king himself.

This reveals a shocking twist in Kish's story

in around 2350 BCE.

King Ur-zababa of Kish

sends his cup bearer, Sargon,

to broker a peace deal with Lugal-zage-si,

an ambitious young king from the south,

but Sargon betrays Ur-zababa.

He forms a new alliance with Lugal-zage-si.

Together, they conquer Kish and burn the palace to the ground.

Sargon is emboldened by his rise to power and rebels

again -- he amasses an army,

defeats Lugal-zage-si in battle,

and conquers his territories.

Sargon declares himself the ruler of a new superpower,

the Acadian empire.

He is the first emperor in history.

Sargon's new imperial rule is brutal and bloody.

The surviving citizens of Kish memorialized their great kings

and buried their dead on the remains

of the destroyed palace.

The burials prove that Sargon's takeover

and the destruction of the palace

do not erase the memory of Kish's powerful kings.

But if the mighty city of Kish is razed to the ground,

what are these buildings that still stand on the site today?

And why does the title "King of Kish" live on?

NARRATOR: Kish's royal palace is razed to

the ground and the king of Kish usurped.

But Ammar's investigation shows that life in

the city continues into the 2nd millennium BCE.

Ammar hunts for clues of what happens to

Kish and its kings after the palace is destroyed.

The 46-foot ziggurat ruin is a bold red color,

but the surrounding land and the ruins

of the other ziggurats are earthy brown.

Ammar believes the discovery of this ancient kiln

nearby could explain this stark difference.

NARRATOR: Ammar suspects the red bricks for

the ziggurat could be made in kilns like these.

He works with a brickmaker, Achmed Hamza,

to put his theory to the test.

They build their own miniature

kiln based on the ancient design.

The 30 mud bricks inside have been baked

for seven hours and then left to cool.

NARRATOR: The kiln-baked red bricks are

stronger than the simple mud bricks

across most of Kish.

Their presence on the ziggurat is striking evidence

that a later civilization rebuilds this monument.

Ammar finds more evidence of a later reconstruction at Kish.

NARRATOR: Ammar searches for clues of the new builders.

He finds evidence that the temple ruin next

to the crumbling ziggurat is also a later construction.

[speaking foreign language]

[speaking foreign language]

NARRATOR: King Nebuchadnezzar rules a mighty empire

from his capital, Babylon,

once the greatest city of the ancient world, with its own

mighty ziggurat and the legendary hanging gardens.

He rules from 605 BCE,

long after Kish is abandoned.

Stephanie Dalley believes King Nebuchadnezzar is attracted

to the ruins of Kish for a very particular reason.

The patron god of Kish was the war god Zababa.

Now, the oracles of a war god are specially useful,

because when you're setting off for battle,

you need to know if it's safe to do so.

And so the oracle was very much sought after.

NARRATOR: King Nebuchadnezzar honors Zababa by rebuilding

his ziggurat,

and Kish becomes a vital accessory

to the mighty Babylonian Empire.

STEPHANIE: Kish became a military base for Babylon.

NARRATOR: Kish and its kings become

a symbol of ultimate rule in Mesopotamia.

The legendary capital of Kish rises

from the riverbeds of the mighty Euphrates

to become one of the first cities in the world.

The kings of Kish are among the world's first kings.

They embody an idea of monarchy

that reverberates through millennia to today.

They build one of the earliest royal palaces ever discovered

and conquer foreign lands to create the world's first empire.

And with writing and arithmetic,

they create a legacy for us 5,000 years

after the civilization they build returns to dust.

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