Kathleen Martinez and the Search for Cleopatra's Tomb

Is the tomb of Cleopatra and Marc Antony about to be discovered? If the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and a young archeologist named Kathleen Martinez are correct, the greatest find since King Tut's Tomb is about to be unearthed.

According to CNN:

"Kathleen Martinez is a young archaeologist from the Dominican Republic who has toiled for three years on a barren hillside overlooking the coastal highway linking Alexandria with the Libyan border. According to the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, it's here, at a spot known as Abusir, that the tomb of Marc Antony and Cleopatra might be located."

Kathleen Martinez, whose training is in the law, also wants to restore the reputation of Queen Cleopatra, which has been somewhat tarnished in recent years by historians who concluded that she was relatively unattractive and a political schemer who led her country to ruin and Roman occupation.

Kathleen Martinez disagrees. She says that Cleopatra ""spoke nine languages, she was a philosopher, she was a poet, she was a politician, she was a goddess, and she was a warrior." On Cleopatra's physical attributes, Zahi Hawass, the director of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, suggests, "I think that the lady who captured the hearts of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony cannot have been ugly."

Cleopatra has been celebrated in popular culture for centuries. Shakespeare wrote a play about her doomed love affair with Marc Antony. Cleopatra has been played in films by Theda Bara and Elizabeth Taylor.

Kathleen Martinez has been digging on a hillside overlooking the highway between Alexandria and the Libyan border for the past three years. If she eventually finds the Tomb of Cleopatra and Marc Antony, it will be the greatest archeological find since King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the 1920s.

If the tomb contains the mummified remains of Cleopatra and Marc Antony, computer reconstructive technology will be able to tell us, at last, the actual appearance of two of the ancient world's most celebrated characters. The grave goods they were likely buried with (provided that they have not been looted as too many tombs have been over the centuries) will not only be valuable beyond imagining, but will also provide insights into life in late Ptolemaic Egypt, just as the grave goods of King Tut enlightened our understanding of 18^th Dynasty Egypt.

According to CNN the location of Cleopatra's and Marc Antony's Tomb is just one of the mysteries lying under the sands of Egypt waiting to be discovered.

"Some archaeologists are trying to find the tomb of Alexander the Great (who died in Babylon but, according to some ancient historians, was buried in Egypt)."Others are searching for the remains of the lost army of Cambyses -- 50,000 soldiers dispatched on a mission by the Persian Emperor to attack the Oracle of Amon (today's Siwa Oasis in western Egypt) only to disappear during a sandstorm in the Sahara Desert."

Egypt itself, with its pyramids, monuments, and tombs is one of the most fascinating countries in the world for the history minded. When one has seen the Great Pyramids of Giza from the balcony of one's hotel, walked the Valley of the Kings, and beheld the monument at Abu Simbel, there is not much else in the world that can be more impressive. Cleopatra's Tomb, should it be unearthed, will be just as impressive, if only for the fact of its history and who has rested there for over two thousand years.

Source: Mysterious Cleopatra has 21st-century defender, Ben Wedeman, CNN, April 20th, 2009