Cleopatra's Tomb Found?

[LuvNewcastle]

BURG EL-ARAB, Egypt (AFP) – Archaeologists revealed a rocky hilltop in northern Egypt on Sunday where they believe Cleopatra was buried 2,000 years ago by the side of her Roman lover Mark Anthony after she committed suicide with a self-inflicted asp bite.

The team, led by antiquities chief Zahi Hawass and Kathleen Martinez, an Egyptologist from the Dominican Republic, hopes that the site around the ancient temple of Taposiris Magna, erected to honour the Egyptian god Isis in around 300 BC, will soon reveal the legendary lovers' final resting place.

The team has worked there for three years -- the latest in a chain of digs since an expedition by Napoleon in the 19th century.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090419/wl_mideast_afp/egyptarchaeologycleopatra_20090419204642

[Rowdyboy]

1. I've heard rumors that the tomb may have been found......

How fascinating if its true...After 2000 years

[NYC_SKP]

2. Does this not mean that Mark Anthony's Tomb has also been found?

cool!

[LuvNewcastle]

3. Yeah, at least one of the articles

I read said that Marc Antony is expected to be in the same tomb.

[MADem]

4. Wow....just... WOW!!

What a nice point of pride for the Dominican Republic, where Martinez is from.

This will give a shot in the arm to Egyptian tourism, too:

Martinez says that the find of a carved male head, a fragment of a mask with a cleft-chin, coins and other artifacts prove that this is Anthony's burial site.

And she is convinced that Cleopatra's body also lies somewhere on this rocky outcrop overlooking the Mediterranean, 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Alexandria.

"There are historic proofs in the works of (Roman chronicler) Plutarch where he says Cleopatra was buried with Mark Anthony," Martinez said.

A lawyer by training, Martinez said that trying to unravel the fate of the doomed lovers began as a hobby but has now become what Hawass said could be "one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century."

Martinez said she "always had the conviction that the tomb of Anthony and Cleopatra was in this temple. We have been looking for the right tunnels, but so far we have only found the entrance to other chambers.

"I studied Cleopatra for 14 years, and I came up with the idea that her death was a religious act, to be bitten by this asp and buried in this temple, so I started searching for the temple," she said.

"She couldn't be buried in a different place from Mark Anthony and be protected by Isis."

The theory was initially disparaged by experts, and after five years of research, it took another year for Martinez to get approval to dig.

But today even Egypt's antiquities supremo Hawass enthusiastically endorses the hypothesis, which could lead to the greatest discovery in the country since Howard Carter found the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun in 1922.