Buried Secrets of the Bible with Albert Lin (Full Episode) | The Parting of the Red Sea: The Truth

the stories of the Bible are some of the most incredible tales in human history tails of right and wrong good versus evil but how did these stories originate I'm curious to know where these cultural ripples began because regardless of your belief they're important because they've shaped the lives of billions over thousands of years my name is Albert Lynn and I look at the world in a unique way I use 21st century technology to look back into the past I explore the ancient world from space with the help of science I'm going to strip away the Earth to find answers that have been hidden for centuries I'll be traveling to some of the most incredible and awe inspiring places on [Music] Earth to reveal lost cities and ancient cataclysms [Music] and I'm going to start by unraveling the mysteries of an iconic biblical tale with a miracle at its heart let's start with the premise of the story it describes a man named Moses who demands Pharaoh free his people the Israelites after years of slavery according to the story God unleashes a series of plagues till finally Pharaoh agrees to release the Israelites so they leave Egypt and they head for the Promised Land if we believe what is written in the Bible then a satellite looking down on Ancient Egypt some 3,000 years ago would have seen something amazing a fast Cavalcade of people the Israelites heading for freedom but Pharaoh changes his mind and sends him his army to chase them down and to kill them the Israelites increased their Pace but their way is blocked by an impenetrable obstacle the Red Sea they're trapped and the Egyptian Army is closing in fast then supposedly something extraordinary happens Moses stretches out his arm the waters [Music] part and the Israelites Escape across the exposed sea as the Egyptian Army pursues them the waters flood [Music] backing [Music] and Pharaoh's [Music] Army is destroyed it's a great story but could anything like this have ever really happened in search of answers I've come to the sight of all the action the Beating Heart of the ancient world just a few weeks ago I was driving my kids to school and now I'm here in Egypt on top of this Monument there's just few places in the world that make you feel like uh [Music] overwhelmed [Music] most experts agree that the story of Moses and the Israelites happened in the time of Ramsey II the greatest of all pharaohs he reached the height of his powers around 1250 BC so that gives us a precise date it's a start but there's a problem the biblical texts tell us that there were Israelites in Egypt for Generations but no one has found any physical trace of them but I've been told there's one p izing clue to track it down I'm off to one of the great museums of the [Music] world wow the answer I'm looking for well it might just be hidden Within These Walls it's like a warehouse of Antiquities this place is incredible [Music] I'm here to meet Meredith brand an archaeologist working in Cairo is there anything here that describes the Israelites from the Egyptian record there is something I'd like to show you way over here in the corner there's this Stila there's something on the back that's really interesting a v vital clue but hidden deep in the shadows if we look here so this is the victory Stila of marpa it's beautiful yeah it's gorgeous that's marpa the guy in the middle he's the son of Ramsey II the ramsy the great the ramsy the great yeah his son and he was ruling in the early 1200s BC but what's really impressive is down here this piece has actually been kind of it looks discolored this is where people have been touching it so much so what you have the two re leaves right there that's a y that long thing with two lines with a rope that's an S that's a mouth it's an r a single read is an I then you have the vulture it's an A and then you have another R the ancient Egyptians didn't actually have an L in their language so when they were writing foreign words that had L's they used an r and that would say Israel this actually says Israel it actually says Israel this is the first and the only mentioning of the word Israel in an ancient Egyptian text that's remarkable from the Sun of ramsy II a story written in stone describing his victory over a people called Israel but that's all there is the Israelites are at the center of our story but why is there only one mention of Israel in the entire Egyptian record maybe the problem is the name what if the Israelites were called something else [Music] I'm following a lead heading south on a near 500m Journey from Cairo to the city of [Music] Luxor my whole life I never dreamed I'd be watching the sunset over the Nile it's surreal in the time of ramsy II Luxor was called thieves it was his Capital City the religious and ceremonial center of the whole Egyptian [Music] Empire I'm excited not just because we're surrounded by all this epic ancient history and culture but because I've been told there's evidence here of a mysterious people who might just be the real [Music] Israelites Luxor is full of magnificent temples and hidden secrets and it might hold the key to my quest you know I've been told about these mysterious people the shasu and the evidence surrounding them is really compelling you know firstly there's these hieroglyphs which read the shasu of Yahweh and Yahweh is the god of the Israelites so maybe these are the people I'm looking for [Music] for and secondly there's a Papyrus that says the shasu fled Egypt right around the same time as a story of Moses was taking place finally the reason I'm here among all these Splendid temples I'm looking for something much smaller in the 1930s archaeologist found something amazing here the ruins of a very distinctive house that many believe was built by the shasu I want to find it because remains of very similar houses have been found all over the holy lands if the shasu built houses in both places that suggests their travels took them between Egypt and the holy lands just like the story of the Israelites this is a photo of one of the houses found in Israel the layout makes it very distinctive almost like a fingerprint so this is what I'm looking for somewhere in this Wasteland is where the shasu might have lived or rather under it because on the surface all traces of gone but it's not all lost I can use my tech to see what my eyes can't stone walls underground have a different Heat Signature to the sand so by looking in the infared Spectrum I can reveal Secrets hidden for millennia look at that this structure looks interesting it's a pretty good match with the same signature fingerprint as the house in Israel wow we may have discovered another shasu house this is the first time in 3,000 years that anyone has seen it it's possible these are the Israelites that I've been searching for and there are traces of them [Music] everywhere this might be the closest I can ever get to [Music] them I just picked this up out of the mud brick over there it's incredible you know what really gets me about Pottery is that this Amper which was made thousands of years ago locked in time in this clay as you run your fingers across the inside you're feeling the Fingerprints of the person who made this [Music] powerful so I may have found the slaves that Moses LED out of Egypt now the question is can I find the lost city where they began their Journey according to the Bible story of Exodus began at a city called ramsy you can't map that on your phone archaeologists think ancient ramsy was located 360 Mi north of Luxor on a site now occupied by the town of quan somewhere around here is a lost city hard to believe looking at it now all I can see is a Modern urban sprawl so I'm looking for the city of ramsy you're actually standing right in it it's underneath our feet you kidding me luckily my guide archaeologist henig Fran has been exploring this site for 14 years and he knows that hidden amongst the farmers Fields lies one in incredible glimpse into a magnificent past wow what is this the feed of a massive statue this is surreal find this in the middle of a field like this are these glyphs this is actually the heroglyph that are telling us who is depicted in the Statue it's the name of Ramy the [Music] second so this is a statue of his feet that is his feet Yes I mean people are just farming away around this ancient statue of Ramsay [Music] huh we know there was a city called ramsy here and 3,000 years ago but what I want to know is that what's under my feet matches the descriptions in the Bible and if it does then maybe this is the starting point for the events that inspired the story of Exodus I'm going to use technology to peel back time and reveal the secrets of this ancient city Henning has used a technique here called magnetometry which records tiny changes in the Earth's magnetic field to reveal hidden structures Underground I've got a hold of some magnetometry data I've got a pretty cool idea of what we can do with it the statue in the field is right here the magnetometry data shows it belong to a temple what else does the data reveal and does it match what's described in the Bible for first the text describes ramsy as a large and important city Henning scans reveal that P ramsy's covered 11 square miles he estimates tens of thousands lived here that's a huge City for ancient times this area was tightly packed with houses where ordinary people lived right next door this huge Villa would have been home to someone rich and Powerful next the texts describe ramsy as a store City so there should have been store Rooms store rooms are usually rectangular buildings divided into narrow Chambers looks like that's what we could have here finally we know that Pharaoh kept his chariots here that means Stables [Music] over here Henning's excavations have uncovered a huge stable for 460 horses just what you would need for an army of Chariots so the answers are there laid out in the data but what I want to know now is what this place looked like that's where my tech comes in all right it's going to get pretty cool now we built a augmented reality platform that combines Henning's magnetometry scans with a digital reconstruction of what we think this place might have looked like 3,000 years ago and with this little piece of tech we can get a window literally a window into the past okay ready archaeologists have helped us recreate the city as it might have once looked [Music] wow there it is Ramsay's a second see what's here looks like uh this looks like it could have been a store [Music] room look like a stable wow all right around the corner a street of houses and not too far to the North look at that [Music] Palace P ramsy must have been an incredible place and maybe the shasu started their Journey from there and if they did where'd they go was it the Red Sea the really big question is how do you explain what happened next one question has puzzled Scholars for centuries if the Israelite story is based on actual events what route did they take to the holy lands the direct route would have taken them East along the Mediterranean Coast but the biblical story Maps the Israelites Journey via the desert road towards the Red [Music] Sea and that means a long hike in this searing [Music] heat I came here just to understand this desert what it might have been like to try to cross it maybe 3,000 years ago or today it's all the same there's nothing here no water it's not even a tree kill me probably in a matter of days according to the story somehow the Israelites made it across straight into an even tougher challenge the Red Sea how on Earth were they going to get across that that before the Egyptians caught up with them to find out I'm on my way to a place where the biblical text say they set up camp Ethan now believed to be modern day is [Music] Mia all right nice yeah out of the sun huh I'm here to meet biblical archaeologist Professor Steven so this is isia where we are yep it turns out we're really close to the description of where the Israelites went it's at this point in the story that the Bible tells the tale of Moses parting the Red Sea so from etham the Israelites would have headed south it makes sense that they would have crossed the narrowest point of the northern part of the Red Sea [Music] here to figure out the problem Moses faced I need to know how wide and how deep it was at this point beet data can reveal the depth of seas and oceans this is 300 ft about 90 m in depth and across it's 30 Mi right that's a lot of water and to me that doesn't make any sense my calculations show that to create a mile wide Channel big enough to allow a vast group of Israelites to pass OES would have needed to move nearly two trillion gallons of water you need the Hoover Dam to hold back that much water and even if it happened how could so many people make it over in just one night let's say there was some event that allowed the water to be removed for a moment okay but even then how do you make 30 Mi on foot in a single day I mean for me I can't run 30 m in a day I I agree with you that's a lot of distance to cover right now The Parting of the Red Sea looks impossible at least it looks impossible here but what if it happened somewhere else Steven has come up with an extraordinary theory that turns the story on its head the thing is that I don't think this is the Red Sea that the Bible's talking about I think it's important to know that it was mistranslated we call it the Red Sea because that's what we read in our English Bible Red Sea but the actual language in Hebrew was yam souf and a better translation is sea of reeds or the Reed sea Reed sea that's [Music] incredible I mean every story that I've heard about this talks about the Red Sea The Parting of the Red Sea and I just learned that it could be an misinterpretation of the Reed sea I me that just blows my mind I got to find out [Music] more I have no idea where to find the mysterious Reed sea but I've been told there's a clue hidden back in [Music] Luxor in a country filled with wonders the carnic temple complex is one of the greatest and engraved on one of its magnificent walls is something extraordinary an epic pictoral history of the conquests of pharaoh CI I father of ramsy II an archaeologist Aiden Dodson believes it could hold the key to my quest what is this well basically what you've got is a whole sequence here with seti dealing with Rebels and he's bringing them along to the border of Egypt who are those Rebels a bunch of people know there's the shasu the shasu yes the shasu bound as captives and carved in stone the very people I've been looking for and crucially it turns out that this inscription is more than just a story what you've got here is this almost aerial view of the coast of Egypt and then we've got this water course coming through so this is actually a map effectively yeah it's very schematic one and Aiden believes it's a map that could show us the way to the Reed seene well this is a river is there an image of a reed sea well basically you've got this Waterway here the little things on either side are actually Reeds it fits quite nicely being of the Nile Delta which is a fairly marshy kind of area may look like a river but Aiden thinks this channel represents the whole Nile Delta with all its Lakes tributaries and even crocodiles there's one more clue in the biblical text it says the night before they crossed the Reed sea the Israelites camped near a place called migdol migdol is a generic term for a fortress it doesn't actually mean a specific place however in the context of what you're trying to look into we've actually got one of these Mig dolls just here I am incredibly excited about this fact that we're starting to get closer to the unfolding of a potential story and it's in a map but where is mingle and how does it relate to the Reed sea the ancient Egyptians Drew their Maps up upside down with the south at the top to make sense of it I need to look at it in a different way and it all becomes clear mdol is east of the Nile Delta the Israelites Journey now takes a very different route if we follow this map the strange detour South to the Red Sea is gone instead from Ethan they turn north towards migdol then East on a direct route to the holy lands I'm going to follow this route towards mcville and try to find the Reed seat straight away something on the map catches my eye a large body of water called Lake manzala in the heart of the Nile Delta [Music] and it's full of reads this is it Lake manzala and it's massive I mean it it's it's huge if you were being chased by an army there's no way around it you'd think it was a sea and there's reads everywhere be a reed SE it's possible it really is what I discovered next took my breath away I'm reading this account from 1882 from a British army officer Major General Sir Alexander Bruce tulk tulk and his men were camped near Lake manzala when he witnessed something truly extraordinary this is what he wrote a gale of wind from the Eastward set in and became so strong that I had to cease [Music] work the next morning on going out I found that Lake manzala had totally disappeared the effect of the high wind on the shallow water having actually driven it away Beyond the Horizon the natives were walking about in the mud where the day before the fishing boats now a ground had been floating it suddenly flashed across my mind that that I was witnessing a similar event to what had taken place at the time of the passage of the so-called Red Sea by the Israelites 1882 wow maybe the same thing happened here all those thousands of years ago I've come to an ocean Lagoon called Lake manzala I want to find out from atmospheric scientist Carl Drews if science can explain what tulk saw here in 1882 so this is Lake manzala yes this is a huge Coastal Lagoon this is about maybe waste deep right offshore if you get farther out it's maybe chest deep and farther out maybe even over your head so it's a real Shallow Lake Carl is convinced that what tulk saw is scientifically possible and that he was right to think that it was caused by strong winds if you had wind blowing at 50 mph for 6 hours you get all the water shifting about 6 miles um that's called wind set down okay so that would basically create this effect of removing the ocean yeah it'll just peel away from the shore so the ocean is gone the sea is gone and there's dry land there and when the wind stops the water comes rushing back again that is the best explanation for the phenomenon that's reported in Exodus 14 this is footage of a beach in the Bahamas it was taken just weeks before hurricane Irma hit in 2017 now look at the same Coastline in the immediate aftermath the water's gone and the land it's exposed The Parting of this sea isn't a miracle in [Music] science but there still is a problem lake monzal is over here but migdall where the story says the Israelites camped before they crossed it's here 30 Mi away and nowhere near a lake lake bzal is in the wrong place but this is a mystery I think I can solve from space satellites can track how Rivers move and change course over time since the time of Moses the lakes and channels of the Nile Delta will have moved many miles this is what the area around migdall looks like now if we switch to the infrared part of the spectrum we can reveal areas that were once underwater so let's jump back in time and see what it might have looked like in 1250 BC and there it is that's very nice it's really neat to see all this stuff a read SE exactly where it's described in the story and there's more Carl thinks the shape of this ancient Lake matches the story perfectly so they're marching along this Ridge here and they get stuck right there and then when the water shifted this way and parted around that point they ran across to there potentially this this is what you think could happen that's my that's my suggestion yes so finally maybe this explains the mystery of The Parting of the Red Sea but for me the theory misses one major point of the story which is that water supposedly rushed back in drowning the Army and killing everybody there these Waters they're really shallow probably no more than 6 ft deep it doesn't add up just doesn't quite do it perhaps like many ancient Tales The Exodus story was formed from memories of more than one event it could have even been from different times so I'm on the hunt for a more violent ending and there's a clue back down south in one of the most important sites in the ancient world this is the Valley of the Kings where Egypt's great Pharaohs were buried you know to in common even Ramsay's a second but I'm not here for [Music] them this is the tomb of thutmosis there's stars all over the ceiling this is what I came to see [Music] I heard about these drowning Egyptians just like Pharaoh's Army but what makes this painting really significant is the date who was created around 1550 BC 300 years before or the story of Exodus but right at the time of an ancient disaster so jaw-dropping that people would talk about it for thousands of [Music] years it turns out the final part of my quest lies not in Egypt but 500 mil Northwest in the middle of the Mediterranean [Music] in the ancient world the island of sanini was a vast volcano called Thea in around 1550 BC the same time as the painting of the drowned Egyptians it erupted with a force of 2 million atomic bombs hurling billions of tons of rock and Ash 20 M into the air it was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in human history but could it have inspired the story of Pharaoh's drowned Army Dr I namu is a scientist who has studied the eruption and the effect it had on the region we had a lot of parastic flows that enter into the sea very very violently with high speed what do you mean parastic you have a lot of materials like pamis volcanic rocks this is pomis yeah this is pomis all of this material fallen into the sea very violently creating these waves of energy boom boom yeah generated multiple meat tsunamis not only one that's like [Music] unbelievable but were any of these tsunamis so big that they could have traveled 500 miles to Egypt I can combine E's data with a satellite image to see just how much material hit the water these underwater mountains are all p parastic material from the eruption Eevee calculates that the total volume of 19 cubic miles of pyroclastic material entered the water that's nearly 3 trillion cubic feet hitting the sea at hundreds of miles an hour scientists believe this eruption would have caused a series of tsunamis the biggest could have been 100 ft high this monster wave could still have been 20 ft when it hit the coast of Egypt we know from recent events just how destructive tsunamis can be the coast of Egypt is flat and low-lying the wave could have traveled miles inward the effects they would have been devastating it's incredible that a volcanic island in the Mediterranean could be the last piece of an ancient Egyptian [Music] puzzle in that time anyone witnessing a Sunami would think it was an act of God and if you were fleeing persecutions and the Seas parted for any reason you would think an higher force was helping you you add in a mighty leader with a staff no matter what you believe you get a story so resonant that it's lasted for thousands of years it's inspired multiple religions and it shaped the lives of [Music] billions

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 769,808

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, photography, full episode, The Buried Secrets of the Bible, Bible with Albert Lin, Full Episode, The Parting of the Red Sea, The Truth, Albert Lin, New Technology, Red Sea, Truth behind the Red Sea, The Bible, Red Sea Parting, Discovering the Hidden Truth

Id: 3R6UPzGBuMg

Length: 44min 24sec (2664 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2023