Buried beneath a lake in Guatamala sits a fortune in lost treasure -- Mayan gold to be precise -- and a group of German archaeologists has just set off to find it. Their only guidance, a freshly decoded ancient book containing a map to the treasure.

It sounds like a movie, but it's very much real, reported FoxNewsLatino. Joachim Rittsteig, an expert in Mayan writing who is heading up the mission to Guatemala's Lake Izabal, the site reported. Rittsteig claims to have cracked the famous Dresden Codex, a pre-Columbian Maya book possibly from the 11th century, and discovered in its pages specific information that leads to a treasure in the lake.

"The Dresden Codex leads to a giant treasure of eight tons of pure gold," said Rittsteig, who has spent more than 40 years studying the document. According to the German newspaper Bild, which is sponsoring the expedition, two reporters from the publication, a photographer, a television camera, and a professional diver will visit Izabal in an attempt to find the gold.

A professor emeritus at Dresden University and author of various publications about the Maya culture, Rittsteig stressed that the information is in the Codex.

"Page 52 talks about the Maya capital of Atlan, which was ruined by an earthquake on October 30th in the year 666 BC," he said. "In this city, they kept 2,156 gold tablets on which the Maya recorded their laws."

The Bild expedition

After many years of unsuccessfully seeking sponsors for an attempt to recover the archaeological treasure he believes to be at the bottom of Lake Izabal, by February of 2011 Joachim Rittstieg had persuaded the exploitative and sensationalist Bild newspaper to mount an expedition.

Accompanying him are reporter Tim Thorer, who previously covered the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull and interviewed former Palermo mayor and determined Mafia opponent Leoluca Orlando; reporter Jürgen Helfricht, who previously took part in South African and Zambian expeditions; photographer Holm Röhner, who previously travelled to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, Russia and Bulgaria; videographer Claas Weinmann, who covered the largely peaceful 2011 Egyptian revolution from Cairo; and diving instructor Steffen Haufe, who has conducted previous underwater expeditions exploring shipwrecks.

The expedition ended up finding nothing but a pot located on the northern shore of Lake Izabel.