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The most intriguing question about the death of Cleopatra has nothing to do with whether or not she was bitten by an asp.
Instead of how she died, the puzzle that has vexed archaeologists is where the Egyptian queen is buried. A stunning discovery off the coast of Egypt may have brought us a step closer to an answer.
A sunken port has been discovered close to a temple near Alexandria by a team under the leadership of Kathleen Martínez, a lawyer turned archaeologist who has spent 20 years investigating the area of Taposiris Magna. Martínez believes that this long-overlooked part of the Egyptian coastline could hold one of the country’s biggest secrets.
Speaking moments after the discovery, Martínez said: “This is one of those moments when you feel so alive … After 2,000 years, nobody has ever been there. We are the first ones.”
Martínez gave up her career as a lawyer to search for Cleopatra’s tomb, which she became convinced was in Taposiris Magna, below KENNETH GARRETT The port lies off the coast of the modern settlement of Borg El Arab, 30 miles west of Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty of which Cleopatra was the final ruler. The process of discovering the port was dramatic and is detailed in the documentary Cleopatra’s Final Secret for National Geographic. The discovery indicates that the settlement was considerably bigger and more important than previously thought, bolstering Martínez’s theory. She believes that a temple on the site could have been where Cleopatra decided to be buried. She may have been buried with her husband, Mark Antony, after they were defeated by Octavian, later Augustus. Martínez said she felt absolutely certain that the final discovery of Cleopatra’s tomb was within reach. “I’m not going to stop,” she said. “For me, it’s a matter of time.” When Martínez set out her theory in the early years of this century, she raised eyebrows, not least because she was not yet an archaeologist. Despite having a degree in the subject, she was working as a lawyer in the Dominican Republic. She was so convinced that Taposiris Magna was worth investigating that she left all of that behind. Divers found anchors, jars and a polished floor on the seabed NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC One of the keystones of her theory was the work of the historian Plutarch, who said that Cleopatra built a tomb close to “a temple of Isis”. Martínez was sure that Cleopatra would have chosen to be buried in a place with connections to the goddess Isis, to whom the queen had linked herself. Having explored temples near Alexandria, she became certain that only Taposiris Magna had both the appropriate size and the possibility of a connection with the Egyptian deity. Having persuaded the Egyptian authorities that it was worth a go, Martínez endured a near-barren first season of digging until she found foundation plates that showed the temple at Taposiris Magna was indeed dedicated to Isis. • Ruins of 2,000-year-old sunken city lifted from Alexandria waters In the years since, Martínez has helped to discover dozens of tombs and thousands of artefacts. Burials have also been found with faces turned towards the temple, an indication that someone royal could have been interred there. However, the most recent revelation has its origins in 2022 when a tunnel was discovered deep under the temple. Martínez’s search is being shown as a documentary KENNETH GARRETT Dark and filled with water, it seemed to run straight towards the sea. It stretched for 1,300m (4,300ft), taking it under a modern road and town and into the Mediterranean. Martínez employed the help of the American explorer and Titanic locator Bob Ballard to scan the seabed with sonar. • How the tomb of Thutmose II was found: the resting place of a pharaoh A number of promising areas were found along the line of the tunnel but, again and again, they turned out to be natural formations. With time running out for the search, the path of the tunnel was recalibrated and a new area was searched. Finally, strange formations appeared on the scans. “We started seeing structures,” Ballard said. “We found it and the tunnel pointed directly at it.” The structures are as high as 20ft and among them is a flood of evidence: anchors, amphora and even a polished floor. It is indicative of a busy port, lost to the waves in one of the many earthquakes suffered through the centuries. Martínez believes that this makes Taposiris Magna a place of importance, and would have made an ideal venue to which Cleopatra could retreat and be buried. Martínez’s case has been building, but the coup de grâce still eludes her. “We will continue searching on land and underwater,” Martínez said. “This is the beginning of this huge task. Nobody can tell me that Cleopatra is not at Taposiris Magna. To say that you have to excavate the whole area and not find her.”
