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Archaeologists have discovered a 2,000 - year - old tomb containing 12 skeletal frame beneath the " Treasury " in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan .
In Arabic , the Treasury is known as " Al - Khazneh , " which read to " the treasury of the Pharaoh of Egypt . " The precise design of the Treasury is unreadable , but it may have been a mausoleum for the Nabataean king Aretas IV Philopatris . pic buffs may call up it as the site where the " Holy Grail " — the cup that Jesus is said to have used during the Last Supper — was found in the 1989 movie " Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade . "
Josh Gates, the host of “Expedition Unknown,” along with Pearce Paul Creasman and Matthew Vincent, archaeologists with the American Center of Oriental Research, dig in front of the Treasury at Petra.
While excavating the tomb , archaeologists recently unearthed the corpse of pottery that was buried with the individuals . They found that one of the skeletons was hold a ceramic vessel resembling a chalice , according to astatementfrom the University of St Andrews in Scotland .
Sediments and materials from the burials escort to sometime between the mid - first century B.C. and the former second century A.D. , according to an analysis byTim Kinnaird , a research officeholder at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews .
It ’s not clear who these 12 people were , and research into the tomb and its clay are ongoing .
Archaeologists unearth a ceramic chalice in a tomb beneath the Treasury in Petra.
Related:31 ancient temple from around the populace , from Göbekli Tepe to the Parthenon
Filling in the gaps
The tomb was discovered during removed detection workplace carried out byRichard Bates , a geophysicist at the University of St Andrews .
" The discovery is of international significance as very few perfect burials from the early Nabataeans have ever been reclaim from Petra before , " Bates said in the statement . " The entombment , their goodness , and the human remains can all be expected to assist fill the gap of our knowledge in how Petra come to be and who the [ Nabataeans ] were . "
The Nabataeans flourished in southern Jordan around 2,000 old age ago . Caravan routes move through their realm and Petra became a major metropolis with breathtaking architecture . The Romans take command of their land during the second century A.D. and Petra worsen afterward , agree to theAmerican Museum of Natural History .
When the clay of a grave were discover , an dig program was pull up by Jordan ’s Department of Antiquities and the American Center of Oriental Research . Discovery Channel also supported the excavation and produced a documentary about it , which recently aired in the boob tube series " dig Unknown . "
Laurent Tholbecq , a professor at the Archaeology and Heritage Research Center at the Free University of Brussels who was not imply with the inquiry , told Live Science that " two like tombs were dig up beside this one by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan about twenty years ago . "
The newly discovered tomb , which must be honest-to-god than the Treasury , will aid supply a appointment of the Treasury itself , which has long been a matter of public debate , he state .
The " dating of the Khazneh , which has long been scrap but is now place in the first quartern of the first century AD , should be sustain by the day of the month of the artefacts found in this tomb , " Tholbecq told Live Science in an e-mail .
Lucy Wadeson , an archeologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved with the research , praised the determination . " This uncovering will hopefully shed igniter on the little love burial practices of the Nabataeans since so few unlooted tombs have been unearth , " she tell Live Science in an e-mail . " With the human cadaver and grievous goods get in their original context of use , we can finally reconstruct the funeral rituals associated with these glorious tombs . "
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Megan Perry , an anthropology prof at East Carolina University who has done extensive archaeological work in Petra but was not involved with this excavation , said that the discovery of this grave is not a surprise and is a bit overhyped . A " tomb immediately adjacent to this one was excavate in 2003 , so the finding of another tomb is not particularly unexpected , " Perry tell Live Science in an e-mail . Perry also observe that " other tombs unearth [ in ] Petra , including the unity that I have research , have happen far more than 12 individual . "
Perry enjoin that " amazingly little of Petra has really been turn up , so any fresh data point is good data , provided the labor is convey with best practices in mind , " and note that it may allow more info on Al - Khazneh .
hot Science reached out to the archaeologists who excavate the grave but did not see back by the prison term of publication .
