A 2,000-Year-Old Temple With Ties to ‘Indiana Jones’ Was Just Discovered Off Italy’s Coast

Archaeologists in Italy just made a real-life Indiana Jones discovery.

Near the town of Pozzuoli, approximately 10 miles east of Naples, the remains of an ancient temple built some 2,000 years ago have been found submerged beneath the Tyrrhenian Sea, The New York Post reported. According to the study, which was published in the journal Antiquity, the temple is believed to be the handiwork of the Nabataean civilization—Arian nomads who are known for carving elaborate structures out of rose-colored rock. Most notably, they settled in and constructed Petra’s Treasury in Jordan, a famous UNESCO World Heritage Site and a filming location for Steven Spielberg’s 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade starring Harrison Ford and Sean Connery.

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“For me this was one of the most unexpected discoveries,” Michele Stefanile, the lead author of the study, told Live Science. In 2021, Stefanile began studying the oceanic site and by 2023, as part of a project dubbed Between Land and Sea, maritime archaeologists found two rooms while making a map of the seafloor. According to the excavation team, the rooms measure approximately 32 by 16 feet and feature Roman-style walls and white marble altars with alcoves that likely held sacred stones. Each also bears a Latin inscription “Dusari sacrum.” The phrase translates to “consecrated to Dushara,” which is the deity or main god of the Nabataean people.

“It seems that we have a building dedicated to the Nabataean gods, but with Roman architecture and Latin inscription,” Stefanile explained to Live Science. In Roman times, Puteoli—now Pozzuoli—operated as a trading port for ships traveling across the Mediterranean. The discovery now confirms the existence of a Nabataean community within the port area between 31 BC and 14 AD, in addition to their participation in trading luxury goods. However, as a result of intense volcanic activity, many of the region’s artifacts have been submerged under the water.

Stefanile, who’s also a senior research fellow with the Southern Graduate School in Naples, believes that the Nabataeans deserted the harbor after the Roman emperor Trajan took over. The research team discovered that Nabataeans filled the temple with concrete and pieces of broken pottery in the second century A.D. rather than let it succumb to destruction.

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