The mysterious veil of the Treasury monument in Petra, Jordan, has been lifted again.

Beneath the ancient rock-cut building, archaeologists have uncovered a hidden tomb containing twelve relatively well-preserved human skeletons, along with an extensive array of grave offerings.

Similar tombs were found more than twenty years ago on the other side of the famous Treasury, also known as Al Khazneh, one of the Seven Wonders of the World and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A team of researchers received permission from Jordanian authorities early this year to conduct a week of remote sensing in and around the Treasury, the center of a city built by hand into the walls of a city by the inhabitants of the Nabataean kingdom. desert gorge had been carved out.

“There was always the thought that there might be more graves, but no graves have ever been found that contained graves,” said Richard Bates, a geophysicist and professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, in an email. -mail. “The hope was to find a grave that was intact.”

Using ground-penetrating radar, the joint Jordanian and American team, which also included the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the American Center of Research, a nonprofit organization based in Amman, discovered a void and determined its location and depth. Instead of digging straight down, which would have meant cutting through solid rock and damaging part of the building, they carefully dug by hand from the outside into the void, Bates said.

Inside were twelve human skeletons in their original burial place, one of which held the top part of a broken jar and probably dates back to the first century BC. The remains most likely included both men and women and range in age from children to adults, Bates said. although that has yet to be confirmed.

“Since a complete burial has never been found here, it is likely that we will learn much more about the Nabataean kingdom from this find,” Bates said.

The discovery could also provide new insight into the Treasury itself, the purpose of which remains unknown.

“As famous as it is, the Treasury Department is still a mystery to us in many ways,” Pearce Paul Creasman, director of the American Center of Research, said in an email. “Anything we can do to understand it better is important.”

The Treasury, which receives more than a million visitors every year, is Petra’s most famous iconic monument. It appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as the cinematic resting place of the Holy Grail.

The excavation of the newly revealed grave was featured in a two-part episode of the American reality TV series ‘Expedition Unknown’ that aired on the Discovery Channel.

Bates said there was evidence of other cavities in the area that could also be graves.

“It’s very likely that there are more out there,” he said, “and that’s why we need the funding to come back and continue the investigations.”