The rose-red Treasury building at Petra has been one of the world's most photographed monuments for over a century. In 2024, researchers scanning its foundations for flood damage found something nobody expected: a sealed tomb, undisturbed for 2000 years, directly beneath it.

One of the World's Most Photographed Monuments

The Treasury - Al-Khazneh in Arabic - was carved into a sandstone cliff by the Nabataeans, a trading civilization that made Petra their capital around the fourth century BC. The structure was featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and the association has never faded. Until 2024, every attempt to investigate the ground beneath it was blocked by permit restrictions - the Jordanian government typically guards the site closely.

Ground-Penetrating Radar Changes Everything

Professor Richard Bates of the University of St Andrews received rare permission from the Jordanian government to conduct a non-invasive survey using electromagnetic conductivity and ground-penetrating radar. The goal was to assess flooding risk under the Treasury. The equipment picked up probable underground chambers below the facade. The Department of Antiquities and the American Center of Research (ACOR) immediately began planning an excavation.

What Was Inside

Archaeologists entered a sealed chamber roughly 18 feet wide, 18 feet long, and 9 feet tall. Inside, they found 12 complete human skeletons - men, women, and children - all in their original burial positions. A collection of bronze, ceramic, and iron artifacts was also recovered. Preliminary dating placed the burials in the mid-first century BC through the early second century AD, during the height of the Nabataean Kingdom.

The Moment Everyone Froze

One detail captured the world's attention. A skeleton had been interred still clutching a ceramic vessel. When Josh Gates, host of the Discovery Channel's Expedition Unknown, spotted it, he described the reaction: "When we spotted what looked like a chalice, all of us just froze. It looked nearly identical to the Holy Grail." Detailed examination of the vessel revealed it was the top portion of a broken jug, likely from the first century BC - not the Grail, but a 2000-year-old artifact on its own terms.

Why the Discovery Matters

Very few complete Nabataean burials have ever been recovered from Petra, making these 12 skeletons among the rarest archaeological finds from the civilization. "There is so much that we have yet to learn about the Treasury," said Pearce Paul Creasman, executive director of ACOR. "When was this remarkable structure built, and why?" The 2024 discovery, documented for Expedition Unknown Season 14, has reopened one of archaeology's most studied monuments - and what was found directly beneath the floor answers nothing. It only deepens the mystery.

Related Tags