yes. when was the last time someone was kidnapped? yesterday night. yesterday night. okay. are you nervous, kids? okay. so why are we stopping? suddenly our driver pulled over in the middle of nowhere to have a chat with a local bedouin. it seems out here in the desert everyone knows one another and gossip travels fast. what does he say? he told me the road now until now it s okay and don t worry and if anything happens contact us and we ll negotiate everything. don t worry. we re safe? yeah. we are safe. so with our peace of mind restored we arrived at st. catherine s monastery. tucked into the mountains of this same remote region where the bible says moses had finally stopped running. a place called midian. when people come here,
a mountaintop in the center of the walled old city. it is a storied place, layered with spiritual meaning and now dominated by the golden dome and a muslim mosque. but just a short walk away outside the city walls a picture is emerging of the ancient and humble beginnings of jerusalem, which the bible says was founded by solomon s father, david. the city of david was a rather small settlement, hardly can be termed as a city. most probably unfortified. but it was here somewhere. reporter: we met doron ben ami, an israeli archaeologist who leads a team digging for evidence of the original city, which would have existed around 1,000 b.c. and it s got an interesting name. i mean, at least colloquially we re calling it the parking lot dig. yeah. it s hard to believe. but five years ago cars used to park right above our heads here. and once we decided to go
to crush them. prophet david does win against the goliath. it s not only about him but the underprivileged, the underdog. the weak is rendered victorious ultimately. reporter: according to the bible, david s triumph continued. he recaptured the ark of the covenant from the philistines. it had held the ten commandments. and he brought together the warring tribes of the 12 sons of jacob to form a nation. even today the flag of modern israel, founded 3,000 years after his reign, bears the symbol known as the star of david. and jerusalem is the place he chose as his capital, making it not only a holy city but a political one too. there s evidence that king david really lived. just 20 years ago in northern israel archaeologists discovered
pharaoh and names the cities that they were put to work in, and one of them is ramses. so it s a real place. those kinds of clues make one think, well, maybe there really is something to placing this exodus in that time period. coming up did the red sea really part? and what was the root of the exodus? wait until you see what we discovered on our journey. when back to the beginning with christiane amanpour returns. wait until you see what we wait until you see what we
you cannot dig anywhere in egypt and not find something. that s the truth. reporter: but bryan told us there was one place we might find a small clue as to what happened to the biblical israelites. so we left luxor and headed north to cairo. just across the street from tahrir square, the birthplace of egypt s recent revolution, there s the egyptian museum, where you can find a treasure trove of ancient artifacts, among them one that may prove that once upon a time the ancient israelites were here. we re going to take a journey back in time? yes. travel to unravel. travel to unravel. reporter: this is ahmed sadiq, a young aspiring egyptologist. we asked him to show us this monument. it s the earliest evidence of israel s existence in the egyptian record. it belonged to a pharaoh who ruled more than 3,200 years ago. king memta. what is it?