Where is Cleopatra’s tomb?

Lost for more than 2,000 years, the tomb of Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, has long been a source of intrigue for archaeologists and the public alike. And though media reports have suggested the discovery of a lifetime is near, the chances of finding Cleopatra’s tomb are pretty low, experts say. Recent media reports have claimed that archaeologists are on the verge of discovering this tomb at a site called “Taposiris Magna,” located about 31 miles (50 kilometers) west of Alexandria. For the past 15 years, a team led by Kathleen Martinez has been excavating the site, finding remains that date back to the time of Cleopatra, including a hoard of coins minted during her reign.

History: Nearly a dozen scholars with expertise in Cleopatra told Live Science that it’s unlikely that Cleopatra was buried at Taposiris Magna. They also generally agreed that the odds of finding her tomb are slim. Many of the scholars believe that Cleopatra would have been buried within Alexandria, possibly in an area that is now underwater. Over the past 2 millennia, coastal erosion has meant that parts of Alexandria, including a section that holds Cleopatra’s palace, are now underwater. Even if the tomb is not underwater, there is a good chance that it was destroyed at some point in antiquity or that it is buried beneath modern-day development in Alexandria, scholars said. There is also a good chance that it was robbed in ancient times, a number of scholars added. At present no projects are searching for Cleopatra’s tomb underwater although past projects have looked at Cleopatra’s palace. Cleopatra was the last of the “Ptolemies,” a line of rulers descended from Ptolemy Soter, one of Alexander the great generals. Alexander, though he died Babylon, was eventually reburied in Alexandria. Ancient writers often mention Alexander’s tomb, but archaeologists have never found it or the tombs of any of the Ptolemaic rulers. Cleopatra VII was born in Egypt, but she was descended from a lineage of Greek kings and queens who had ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years. The Ptolemies of Macedonia are one of history’s most flamboyant dynasties, famous not only for wealth and wisdom but also for bloody rivalries and the sort of “family values” that modern-day exponents of the phrase would surely disavow, seeing as they included incest and fratricide. The Ptolemies came to power after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, who in a caffeinated burst of activity beginning in 332 B.C. swept through Lower Egypt, displaced the hated Persian occupiers, and was hailed by the Egyptians as a divine liberator. He was recognized as pharaoh in the capital, Memphis. Along a strip of land between the Mediterranean and Lake Mareotis he laid out a blueprint for Alexandria, which would serve as Egypt’s capital for nearly a thousand years. By the time Cleopatra VII ascended the throne in 51 B.C. at age 18, the Ptolemaic empire was crumbling. The lands of Cyprus, Cyrene (eastern Libya), and parts of Syria had been lost; Roman troops were soon to be garrisoned in Alexandria itself. Still, despite drought and famine and the eventual outbreak of civil war, Alexandria was a glittering city compared to provincial Rome. Cleopatra was intent on reviving her empire, not by thwarting the growing power of the Romans but by making herself useful to them, supplying them with ships and grain, and sealing her alliance with the Roman general Julius Caesar with a son, Caesarion. It was Cleopatra’s intense identification with Isis, and her royal role as the manifestation of the great goddess of motherhood, fertility, and magic, that ultimately led Kathleen Martinez to Taposiris Magna. Using Strabo’s ancient descriptions of Egypt, Martinez sketched a map of candidate burial sites, zeroing in on 21 places associated with the legend of Isis and Osiris and visiting each one she could find.

Taposiris Magna: It has been suspected that Cleopatra might be buried at Taposiris Magna because Cleopatra identified with the goddess Isis who “was both sister and wife of the god of the dead, Osiris,” said Glenn Godenho, a senior lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool who hosted a recent documentary on Martinez’s work. But after more than 10 years of work at Taposiris Magna, archaeologists have not found Cleopatra’s tomb and most of the scholars that Live Science talked to are skeptical that it is there. “Kathleen’s missions over the years have been concerned with the Osiris temple itself, and the belief that Cleopatra’s tomb will be discovered within its walls, near to her goddess. So far this has drawn a blank” in terms of trying to find Cleopatra’s tomb, said Godenho.  Another problem is that the burials at Taposiris Magna seem to be of religious figures rather than royalty. ” Additionally many of the scholars noted that historical texts indicate that Cleopatra’s mausoleum is located within Alexandria whereas Taposiris Magna is located 31 miles from the city. While evidence is slim that Cleopatra was buried at Taposiris Magna, that doesn’t take away from the importance of the site.

Underwater Excavations: Underwater excavations begun in 1992 by French explorer Franck Goddio and his European Institute of Underwater Archaeology have allowed researchers to map out the drowned portions of ancient Alexandria, its piers and esplanades, the sunken ground once occupied by royal palaces. The barnacled discoveries brought to the sea’s surface massive stone sphinxes, giant limestone paving blocks, granite columns and capitals whet the appetite for a better understanding of Cleopatra’s world. So far, however, the underwater work has failed to yield a tomb. The only signs of Cleopatra the divers have encountered are the empty cigarette packs that bear her name, drifting in the water as they work.

Certain sculptures: During the 2006-07 season the Egyptian-Dominican team found three small foundation deposits in the northwest corner of the Osiris temple, just inches from where the Hungarian expedition had stopped digging. The deposits conclusively linked the Osiris temple to the reign of Ptolemy IV, who ruled a century and a half before Cleopatra. In 2007, further supporting the view that the site was very important to the Greeks of ancient Egypt, the excavators found a skeleton of a pregnant woman who had died in childbirth. The tiny bones of the unborn baby lay between the skeleton’s hips. Her jaw was distended, suggesting her agony, and her right hand was clutching a small white marble bust of Alexander the Great. Yet the tomb of Cleopatra still hovers out of reach, like a tantalizing mirage, and the theory of who is buried at Taposiris Magna still rests more on educated speculation than on facts. Might not Cleopatra’s reign have unravelled too quickly for her to build such a secret tomb? A fantastic story, like a horse with wings, flies in the face of the principle of parsimony. But it’s a long hard haul from not-yet-proved to disproved. Disembodied, at large in the realm of myth, more context than text, Cleopatra is free to be of different character to different times, which may be the very wellspring of her vitality. No other figure from antiquity seems so versatile in her ambiguities, so modern in her contradictions. In the last hundred years about the only new addition to the archaeological record is what scholars believe is a fragment of Cleopatra’s handwriting which is a scrap of papyrus granting a tax exemption to a Roman citizen in Egypt in 33 B.C. An X-ray of the mummies has been done and results suggest that one is a male and the other, a female. Apart from the mummies, 200 coins bearing Cleopatra’s name and her face have been discovered at the temple altar.

So, She was the fabled queen of ancient Egypt, immortalised over thousands of years as a beautiful seductress. But, despite her fame, Cleopatra’s tomb is one of the great unsolved mysteries.