Lost Cities of the Bible

6000 years ago, a people called the Sumerians built the world’s first cities in Southern Iraq, great metropolises like Uruk and Ur. The first westerners to explore these ruined cities were inspired by stories about them in the Bible – but what was the world of Genesis really like?

Our cameras have unprecedented access to new discoveries that reveal the extraordinary achievements of the Sumerian civilization and how its legacy influenced the later Biblical writers. At the ancient city of Girsu, archaeologists have unearthed the oldest bridge ever found in the world and a set of mysterious ruins that could transform how we see the rise of civilization. Why did southern Iraq play a key role in the Old Testament and did the collapse of the Sumerian world influence one of the greatest stories ever told – Noah and the Great Flood?

Nineveh and Babylon were two superpowers of the ancient world but for the writers of the Bible they were the cities of sin. Why do they have such poor reputations in the Old Testament and what were these cities really like? 

Our cameras have rare access to discoveries at Nineveh, in modern Mosul, the setting for the story of Jonah and the whale. Here archaeologists are rebuilding the city’s mighty gates and piecing together lost wonders destroyed by Islamic State. At Babylon, we follow specialists restoring the Ishtar Gate, built by Nebuchadnezzar II, one of the most notorious tyrants of the Old Testament. The rivalry between Nineveh and Babylon determined the fate of the ancient world – could their conquests also lie behind their terrible reputations in the Bible?