In an effort to answer a riddle that has baffled historians for hundreds of years, archaeologists will start digging locations in Egypt. The riddle is: Where is the ultimate resting place of tragic lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony?
Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced in a statement on Wednesday that archaeologists searching for the graves of the renowned Egyptian queen and the Roman general would start digging three locations at a temple where tombs may be discovered.
According to the council, Cleopatra and Mark Antony, whose romance was subsequently celebrated by William Shakespeare and later portrayed in a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, may have been interred in a deep shaft in a temple close to the Mediterranean Sea.
The alabaster head of a Cleopatra statue, 22 coins with her likeness, and a mask thought to be Mark Antony’s were were Discovered by archaeologists at the temple last year.
According to the council’s announcement, the three locations were discovered last month during a radar assessment of the temple of Taposiris Magna. The temple was constructed by King Ptolemy II and is close to the northern coastal city of Alexandria (282-246 B.C.)
For the past three years, teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic have been excavating the temple. Inside the temple, they discovered a number of deep holes, three of which may have been used for burials. The suggestion implied that the lovers may be interred in a similar shaft.
After losing the Battle of Actium in 30 B.C., the lovers committed themselves. While Cleopatra is thought to have held a deadly asp to her chest, Mark Antony is reported to have murdered himself with his sword.
John Baines, an Egyptologist at Oxford University in England, however, questioned why Augustus, who conquered Antony, would have selected such a prestigious burial site.
Baines remarked, “I don’t really understand why there should be a special relationship between that spot and Antony and Cleopatra.
Egypt’s foremost archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, asserted that the lovely faces depicted on the Cleopatra statue and coins refute a new hypothesis that the queen was “very unattractive.”
The statement quoted Hawass as saying, “The discoveries from Taposiris reveal a charm… and imply that Cleopatra was in no way ugly.”
Researchers from the University of Newcastle in Britain came to the conclusion that the queen wasn’t very beautiful in 2007. They based their judgement on the image of Cleopatra on a Roman coin, which depicts her as a pointed-nosed, thin-lipped lady with a projecting chin.
Excavators have already found a sizable previously unidentified cemetery outside the temple perimeter at the site close to Alexandria. Additionally, 27 graves have been found, with a total of 10 mummies within.
The statement claims that the design of the tombs suggests they were constructed during the Greco-Roman era. The cemetery’s existence further suggests that a significant individual—possibly royalty—could be interred inside the temple.
