Inside Petra's Treasury, a Tomb. Indiana Jones Missed These Bones.

Directly beneath the most famous facade at Petra, sealed under the floor of a building that has been studied, surveyed for two centuries, and made famous by film, 12 people were buried. Nobody knew.

The Khazneh, the Treasury, is the monument everyone recognizes: carved into rose-red sandstone cliffs in southern Jordan, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, and the backdrop for the climactic scenes in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. For most people, that movie is how they first laid eyes on it. Archaeologists have been working Petra since the 1820s. The Khazneh has been in the limelight the entire time.

Last year, archaeologist Pearce Paul Creasman ran ground-penetrating radar under the site. The data matched patterns from confirmed tomb locations elsewhere at Petra. The Jordanian government approved the dig. What came up was a sealed tomb, intact, containing 12 human skeletons and artifacts at least 2,000 years old. It had been sitting quietly under the floor while tourists walked overhead.

Most of Petra's tombs have been found empty. Someone stripped them out long ago. This one wasn't touched.

Who were they? Why here, directly beneath the most significant structure in the ancient Nabataean capital? The bones are 2,000 years old and they're not talking. The excavation answered one question and opened a dozen more.

Petra's Treasury has been keeping grave secrets for 2,000 years. Indiana Jones filmed here twice and still missed them.

Read the full story at Popular Mechanics, May 13, 2026

Hot Take: Indiana Jones trained us to expect glowing relics, snakes and melting faces. Petra's biggest secret wasn't a Lost Ark. It was a lost tomb.