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The search for Cleopatra

One of the myriad reasons for the abiding fascination with Ancient Egypt is that its history is also a story of discovery. A string of adventurers, profiteers, archaeologists, and philanthropists have contributed to searching for its secrets and unlocking its mysteries, their stories inextricably linked with their findings. In 1817, the flamboyant circus showman and tomb raider, Giovanni Battista Belzoni, cleared the sands to enter the magnificent temple of Ramesses II, Eg ypt’s greatest pharaoh. A few years later, painstaking work in France and England led to the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone — found accidentally at a construction site in 1799 — and opened a whole new window of understanding by making intelligible the demotic and hieroglyphic scripts. And in 1923, Howard Carter captured the imagination of the world when he emptied the breathtaking treasures of Tutankhamen’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, an area regarded as archaeologically “exhausted.” Are we on the verge of another amazing Egyptian discovery?

Last week, Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s top archaeologist and head of the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, took journalists through a 2000-year-old crumbling temple, Taposiris Magna, 50 km along the coastline from Alexandria. He told them he believed this was where Cleopatra, the charismatic Ptolemiac Queen and Egypt’s last pharaoh, and Mark Anthony, the Roman general, were laid to rest. A team of archaeologists digging at the site for three years now has unearthed a bust of Cleopatra, coins with her image, and a fragment of what could be Mark Anthony’s mask. But what got the team really excited was the recent discovery of nearby tombs, some of the nobility from the same period (around 30 BC). According to Dr. Hawass, this could mean “there is someone important buried in the temple.” The discovery of deep shafts inside the temple, three of which were possibly used for burials, has also heightened archaeological interest. As some Egyptologists have cautioned, this is far from proof that the two lovers were interred here. But if Cleopatra’s tomb were found, it would surely be, as Dr. Hawass points out, “one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century.” Aside from providing a plethora of significant insights into that period of Egyptian history, such a discovery may settle some questions that engage the popular mind. Was she pure Macedonian or part African? Was Mark Anthony really buried by her side? Is there any truth to the legend of her unrivalled beauty? And how exactly did she commit suicide? The discovery of her tomb will only increase the world’s undying interest in the wonder that was Ancient Egypt.

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