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WHERE WAS CLEOPATRA BURIED?

20120219-cleo sexy.jpg Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic, “People have been puzzling over the whereabouts of Cleopatra's tomb since she was last seen in her mausoleum in the legendary deathbed tableau, adorned with diadem and royal finery and reposed on what Plutarch described as a golden couch...And yet we have no idea where that grave might be.” [Source: Chip Brown, National Geographic, July 2011]

Cleopatra and Antony both committed suicide after their former ally, Octavian, defeated them at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. The two were buried together at a site that the writer Plutarch (A.D. 45-120) described as a "lofty and beautiful" monument, located near a temple of the Egyptian goddess Isis. Many of the scholars believe that Cleopatra was buried within Alexandria, possibly in an area that is now underwater. [Source: Heather Whipps, Elizabeth Peterson, Live Science, October 27, 2016]

Although Alexander the Great died at Babylon, he 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. "The thing is, we don't know where Alexander himself or any of the 15 Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt were buried," Susan Walker, an honorary curator and former Sackler Keeper of Antiquities at the University of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, told Live Science. Walker suspects that Cleopatra's tomb would have been located close to other rulers from the Ptolemaic dynasty. If Cleopatra's tomb and those of the other Ptolemaic rulers were constructed in Alexandria, they would likely now be underwater or buried beneath modern-day development, Walker said. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, July 27, 2020]

Brown wrote: “If Cleopatra's tomb is ever found, the archaeological sensation would be rivaled only by Howard Carter's unearthing of the tomb of King Tut in 1922. But will finding her tomb, not to say her body itself, deepen our portrait of the last Egyptian pharaoh? On one hand, how could it not? ...On the other hand, maybe finding her tomb would diminish what Shakespeare called "her infinite variety." 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.

Search for Cleopatra’s Tomb

Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic, In the past few decades archaeologists have finally taken up the mystery of Cleopatra's whereabouts and are searching for her burial place in earnest. 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. "My dream is to find a statue of Cleopatra — with a cartouche," says Goddio. 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.[Source: Chip Brown, National Geographic, July 2011]

More recently, a desert temple outside Alexandria has become the focus of another search, one that asks whether a monarch of Cleopatra's calculation and foresight might have provided a tomb for herself in a place more spiritually significant than downtown Alexandria — ome sacred spot where her mummified remains could rest undisturbed beside her beloved Antony.

In 2006 at his office in Cairo, Zahi Hawass, then secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, sketched the highlights of an archaeological site where he and a team of scientists and excavators had been digging over the previous year. "We are searching for the tomb of Cleopatra," he said, excitedly. "Never before has anyone systematically looked for the last queen of Egypt."

Was Cleopatra Buried at Taposiris Magna?

In 2004, a woman from the Dominican Republic named Kathleen Martinez contacted Hawass to share a theory she'd developed: that Cleopatra might be buried in a tumbledown temple near the coastal desert town of Taposiris Magna (present-day Abu Sir), about 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Alexandria. The sacred city was established in the 3rd century B.C. and was an important site for the worship of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead and the underworld.

Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic, Located between the Mediterranean and Lake Mareotis, the ancient city of Taposiris Magna had been a prominent port town during Cleopatra's time. Its vineyards were famous for their wine. The geographer Strabo, who was in Egypt in 25 B.C., mentioned that Taposiris staged a great public festival, most likely in honor of the god Osiris. Nearby was a rocky seaside beach, he said, "where crowds of people in the prime of life assemble during every season of the year." [Source: Chip Brown, National Geographic, July 2011]

"I thought before we started digging that Cleopatra would be buried facing the palace in Alexandria, in the royal tombs area," said Hawass. But in time, Martinez's reasoning persuaded him another theory might be worth exploring: that Cleopatra had been clever enough to make sure she and Antony were secretly buried where no one would disturb their eternal life together.

A child prodigy who'd earned her law degree at the age of 19, Kathleen Martinez was teaching archaeology at the University of Santo Domingo, but it was an avocation; she'd never been to Egypt or handled a trowel. She traced her obsession with Cleopatra to an argument she'd had with her father in 1990, when she was 24 years old. She wandered into his library one day looking for a copy of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Her father, Fausto Martínez, a professor and legal scholar normally quite careful in his judgments, disparaged the famous queen as a trollop. "How can you say that!" she protested. After an hours-long debate in which Kathleen argued that Roman propaganda and centuries of bias against women had distorted Cleopatra's character, Professor Martínez conceded that his opinion of Cleopatra might have been unfair.

Why Taposiris Magna?

Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic, “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. [Source: Chip Brown, National Geographic, July 2011]

"What brought me to the conclusion that Taposiris Magna was a possible place for Cleopatra's hidden tomb was the idea that her death was a ritual act of deep religious significance carried out in a very strict, spiritualized ceremony," Martinez told National Geographic. "Cleopatra negotiated with Octavian to allow her to bury Mark Antony in Egypt. She wanted to be buried with him because she wanted to reenact the legend of Isis and Osiris. The true meaning of the cult of Osiris is that it grants immortality. After their deaths, the gods would allow Cleopatra to live with Antony in another form of existence, so they would have eternal life together."

After studying more than a dozen temples, Martinez headed west of Alexandria along the coastal road to explore the ruin she had begun to believe was the last, best hope for her theory. The temple at Taposiris Magna had been dated to the reign of Ptolemy II, though it may have been even older. The suffix Osiris in its name implied the site was a sacred spot, one of at least 14 throughout Egypt where legend holds that the body of Osiris (or a dismembered part of it) had been buried.

With the Mediterranean on her right and Lake Mareotis on the left, Martinez mused on the possibility that Cleopatra might have traveled a similar route, selecting this strategic location for her burial because it was inside the limits of ancient Alexandria and not yet under the control of the Romans during those last days before her death. "When I saw the place my heart beat very fast," she recalls. As she walked the site, she trailed her hands along the white and beige limestone blocks of the temple's enclosure. This is it! she thought. This is it!

In 1935 British traveler Anthony de Cosson had called Taposiris Magna "the finest ancient monument left to us north of the Pyramids." What was surprising was how little work had been done at the site. In 1905 Evaristo Breccia, the renowned Italian archaeologist, had excavated the foundation of a small fourth-century A.D. Coptic basilica in the otherwise vacant courtyard of the enclosure and discovered an area of Roman baths. In 1998 a Hungarian team led by Gyo"zo" Vörös found evidence of a colonnaded structure inside the enclosure that they concluded (incorrectly, as it turned out) had been an Isis temple.

It was clear when Vörös's book, Taposiris Magna, was published in 2004 that the temple had had three incarnations — as a Ptolemaic sanctuary, a Roman fort, and a Coptic church. But was that the whole story? Zahi Hawass found himself pondering the possibility that a black granite bust of Isis that Vörös had coaxed from the dirt of Taposiris Magna might well be the face of Cleopatra herself.

Archeological Work at Taposiris Magna

Taposiris Magna Temple
In October 2005 excavations at Taposiris Magna with aim of finding Cleopatra’s tomb began. Describing the scene there in 2010 Chip Brown wrote in National Geographic, “On the bedrock in the middle of the site an array of column fragments showed the ghostly outlines of what Hawass and Martinez have concluded was not a temple to Isis, but a temple to Osiris. It was oriented on the east-west axis. At an angle just north were the faint hints of an Isis chapel; to the south, an excavated rectangular pit: "That was the sacred lake," Martinez says.

It's a cliché that you can stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere in Egypt and find something amazing from the long-gone past. When Martinez and a team of excavators began probing the ground in 2005, she was focused less on the ultimate prize of Cleopatra's tomb than on simply finding sufficient evidence to sustain her theory that Taposiris Magna might be the place to look. She hoped to demonstrate that the temple was among the most sacred of its day, that it was dedicated to the worship of Osiris and Isis, and that tunnels had been dug underneath the enclosure walls. Within the first year, she was rewarded by the discovery of a shaft and several underground chambers and tunnels. "One of our biggest questions is why did they dig tunnels of this magnitude," she says. "It had to be for a very significant reason."

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. "She is a mystery," said Martinez, who had a coffin built for the remains of the mother.

In six years Taposiris Magna has become one of Egypt's most active archaeology sites. More than a thousand objects have been recovered, 200 of them considered significant: pottery, coins, gold jewelry, the broken heads of statues (probably smashed by early Christians). An important discovery was a large cemetery outside the temple walls, suggesting that the subjects of a monarch wished to be buried near royal remains.

According to Live Science in 2020: 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. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, July 27, 2020]

Another problem is that the burials at Taposiris Magna seem to be of religious figures rather than royalty. "My understanding is that the mummies found there are more likely to be high-status priests than members of the royal family," said Walker. Additionally many of the scholars that Live Science talked to noted that historical texts indicate that Cleopatra's mausoleum is located within Alexandria whereas Taposiris Magna is located 31 miles from the city.

In 2021, Archaeology magazine reported: Sixteen rock-cut tombs containing mummies dating to the Greco-Roman era were discovered at Taposiris Magna. Two of the mummies were found with tongue-shaped, gold-covered amulets placed in their mouths, which experts believe were meant to help ensure that the deceased would be able to speak with Osiris in the afterlife. [Source: Archaeology magazine May 2021]

Chances of Finding Cleopatra’s Tomb Very Slim

Pharos of Abuqir
at Taposiris Magna Temple
Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: Media reports have claimed that archaeologists are on the verge of discovering Cleopatra’s tomb at "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. Similar reports of an imminent tomb discovery also appeared in the news in 2019. But 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. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, July 27, 2020]

"There is no evidence at all that Cleopatra's tomb could be in [Taposiris Magna]," Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian minister of the State for Antiquities, told Live Science. Hawass said that he worked with Martinez for more than 10 years at the site and found no evidence that Cleopatra and Antony were buried there. "I believe now that Cleopatra was buried in her tomb that she built next to her palace and it is under the water," Hawass said. "Her tomb will never be found."

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.

"It would be remarkable if it could have survived the millennia of culture change and natural ruin," said Robert Gurval, an emeritus professor of Classics at UCLA, who has researched Cleopatra extensively. "Even if untouched by human hands, earthquakes and seawater would have buried or submerged it," Gurval said. "Her palace is certainly under water. Maybe her mausoleum, too."

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Canadian Museum of History historymuseum.ca ; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT, Online Library of Liberty, oll.libertyfund.org ; Gutenberg.org gutenberg.org Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" [∞] and "The Creators" [μ]" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum.Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated July 2024