To talk about historical discoveries and ancient ruins, you often need to describe things that had been done before another point in the past. This is the past perfect passive.
Forming the past perfect passive
In English, you form this tense with "had been" plus a past participle. In Dutch, you use the simple past of the auxiliary verb zijn (was or waren) combined with a past participle.
For singular subjects, use was. In a standard main clause, was takes the second position, and the past participle is pushed to the end of the sentence.
| The old city had been excavated by the archaeologist. | De oude stad was door de archeoloog opgegraven. |
| The temple had been destroyed and was now a ruin. | De tempel was verwoest en was nu een ruïne. |
For plural subjects, you simply use the plural form waren.
| The gold coins had been excavated years ago. | De gouden munten waren jaren geleden opgegraven. |
| Why had these coins been hidden in the cave? | Waarom waren deze munten in de grot verborgen? |
Subordinate clauses
Just like in other tenses, when the past perfect passive appears in a subordinate clause (such as after hoewel, or in a relative clause starting with dat or die), all the verbs are pushed to the end of the clause.
The auxiliary (was or waren) and the past participle sit together at the very end.
| Although the ruin had been discovered, the excavation began late. | Hoewel de ruïne was ontdekt, begon de opgraving laat. |
| The tomb that had been hidden under the stones was empty. | Het graf dat onder de stenen was verborgen, was leeg. |