05 Track 5

Unit 9

Unearthing the Past

Chapter 1

The Search for Cleopatra

Page 149

The Search for Cleopatra

Where, oh where is Cleopatra? Her name is everywhere. The last pharaoh of Egypt is on a board game. A perfume is named after her. Her name is on a popular brand of cigarettes in the Middle East.

She is orbiting the sun as the asteroid 216 Cleopatra. The literature critic Harold Bloom memorably referred to her as the “world’s first celebrity.”

Yet if she is everywhere, Cleopatra is also nowhere. There is no reliable depiction of her face. What images that do exist are based on unflattering silhouettes on coins.

There is an unrevealing six-meter-tall image on a temple. Museums display a few marble statues, most of which may not even be of Cleopatra. People have wondered about the location of Cleopatra’s tomb since the Romans entered the city of Alexandria in 30 BC.

She barricaded herself behind the doors of her mausoleum surrounded by gold, silver, pearls, and other treasures. It may have been in the mausoleum where she killed herself at the age of 39, so she could escape the humiliation of defeat in captivity.

Yet for all we know about Cleopatra’s life, no one really knows how she died or even where her grave might be.

Considering it was known by some to be the most beautiful city in ancient Egypt, Alexandria has attracted less attention than the older sites along the Nile, such as the Pyramids at Giza or the monuments at Luxor.

A succession of earthquakes, tsunamis, rising seas, and the recycling of building stones have destroyed the ancient quarter where Cleopatra and her ancestors lived for three centuries. Most of the glory that was ancient Alexandria now lies submerged under six meters of water.

In the past few decades, archaeologists have finally begun searching for Cleopatra’s burial place.

Recent discoveries such as massive stone statues, paving blocks, and column provide us with a better understanding of Cleopatra’s world. So far, however, the underwater work has failed to yield the tomb.

More recently, a desert temple outside Alexandria has become the focus of another search which began in 2004.

Kathleen Martinez, a professor from the Dominican Republic, contacted Zahi hawass, then secretary-general of the Supreme Council of antiquities.

She shared her theory that Cleopatra might be buried in a temple near the coastal desert town of Taposiris Magna, 45 kilometers west of Alexandria.

In her opinion, modern-day researchers have missed many pivotal clues about where Cleopatra is buried. Martinez then traveled to Egypt and arrange to meet Hawass.

She outlined her theory and asserted that Taposiris Magna was where Cleopatra was buried.

After studying more than a dozen temples, Martinez then headed to Taposiris magna to explore the temple ruins.

She felt Cleopatra might have selected the site for her burial because it was inside the limits of ancient Alexandria that not yet under the control of the Romans during those last days before her death.

At first Martinez was focused less on the obvious prize of Cleopatra’s tomb than on simply finding sufficient evidence to prove her theory that Taposiri Magna might be the place to look.

She hoped to demonstrate that the temple was among the most sacred of its day and that tunnels had been dug underneath the walls. Within the first year, she was rewarded by the discovery of several underground tunnels.

In six years Taposiri Magna has become one of Egypt’s most active archaeology sites. More than a thousand objects have been recovered. One important discovery was a large cemetery outside the temple walls.

Yet the tomb of Cleopatra has not been found. The theory of who is buried at Taposiri Magna still rests more on educated speculation than on facts.

Opponents of Martinez’s theory point out that it is rare in archaeology for someone to announce they are going to find something and then actually find it. “There is no evidence that Cleopatra tried to hide her grave, or would have wanted to,” says Duane Roller, a respected Cleopatra scholar.

“All the evidence is that she was buried with her ancestors. The material associated with her at Taposiris Magna is not meaningful because material associated with her can be found in many places in Egypt.”

If Cleopatra’s tomb is ever found, the archaeological sensation could be rivaled only by Howard Carter’s unearthing of the tomb of King Tut in 1922.

But will finding her tomb, and her body, deepen our portrait of her? On the one hand, how could it not?

In the last hundred years, the only new addition to the archaeological record is what scholars believe is a fragment of Cleopatra’s handwriting.

On the other hand, finding her to might diminish some of the mystery that surrounds her. Right now, part of the appeal of Cleopatra is that she is free to be whenever we want her to be.

Could finding her final resting place actually make us less enthralled with Egypt’s last pharaoh?