Archaeology breakthrough as 2000-year-old underwater 'Indiana Jones' temple discovered

A 2,000-year-old temple thought to have been built by an ancient civilization that featured in an Indiana Jones movie has been unearthed by archaeologists in Italy.

The religious temple was located off the coast of Puteoli, which is modern-day Pozzuoli, and is thought to be the first known temple discovered that was built by the Nabataeans outside of the Middle East.

They were an ancient nomadic Arabian merchant civilization hailing from , who also built Al Khazneh, the stunning rock-cut tomb at Petra, Jordan, that is carved into a sandstone rockface.

This is where the 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed.

The newly discovered temple had a rectangular plan with two rooms and access to internal routes of the vicus Lartidianus, which was an area for foreigners to trade in.

There are Roman-style walls and marble slabs etched into each room with the Latin inscription Dusari sacrum which means "consecrated to Dushara," who was the main god of the ancient Nabataean religion.

The underwater structure is around 150 feet from the coast of Pozzuoli, itself once a large Roman trading port ships to bring imports into from across the empire.

Hundreds of years of volcanic activity had hidden the temple in layers of magma.

The discovery was revealed in a paper published in the journal Antiquity.

The team said in the study: "The existence of a Nabataean sanctuary within the port area confirms that there was a community from that region participating in the commercial activities of Puteoli.

"The edification of the sanctuary was possible when the Nabataeans enjoyed the freedom and opportunities offered by the friendship with Rome and the independence of their motherland."

It was actually discovered in 2023 when there was an underwater archaeological survey of the port of Puteoli.

The research team has spent the last year carrying out further excavations on the underwater temple.

It is thought it was built during a period when the Nabataean became a main trading partner of the Roman empire, so during the reigns of Augustus (31 BCE - 14 AD) or Trajan (98 - 117 AD).

Nabateans practiced a religion influenced by the Greeks and Egyptians, including many deities formed of sacred stones put into the recesses of altars.

At their peak around the birth of Christ, the Nabateans were across Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

But, after Rome took control of Petra, they were effectively taken over as a civilisation.