The Tomb of Cleopatra & Mark Antony

The account

In the summer of 30 BC, with Octavian's legions inside Alexandria and the war lost, Mark Antony fell on his sword and Cleopatra, last pharaoh of Egypt, took her own life rather than be paraded through Rome in chains. The ancient writers say the two were buried together, in a tomb worthy of a queen who called herself the living Isis. Then Alexandria burned and sank and was built over a hundred times, and the grave of the most famous woman of the ancient world was simply lost.

For two thousand years no one knew where to look, until a lawyer from the Dominican Republic named Kathleen Martinez became convinced she did. Not in the drowned royal quarter where everyone else searched, but twenty five miles west, at a half-ruined temple called Taposiris Magna, dedicated to Osiris and Isis. She has given two decades of her life to digging it, and the temple has rewarded her slowly, coins with Cleopatra's face, a headless royal statue, a foundation deposit, the bones of the dig getting warmer.

In 2022 her team broke into a tunnel cut thirteen meters down through solid rock, more than four thousand feet of it, a feat of engineering one expert called a geometric miracle. Part of it runs under water. It may lead nowhere. It may lead to her.

And that is exactly where the story sits, suspended: a woman has spent twenty years and dug a tunnel a mile long under a temple to the goddess Cleopatra worshipped, and she has found everything except the queen. The tomb of Cleopatra is somewhere close enough to taste, getting nearer every season, and no one has opened the last door. The dig is unfinished, and you can feel how badly it wants to be finished.

Known intelligence

• Cleopatra and Mark Antony died in 30 BC; ancient sources say they were buried together, but the tomb's location was lost.
• Archaeologist Kathleen Martinez has searched the Taposiris Magna temple, about 25 miles west of Alexandria, for two decades.
• The temple is dedicated to Osiris and Isis, the goddess Cleopatra identified herself with.
• In 2022 a 1,305-meter tunnel was found 13 meters underground, a "geometric miracle" that reopened the hunt.

Theories of the hunt

• Cleopatra and Antony were secretly buried at Taposiris Magna to protect them from the Romans.
• The tomb lies under the sunken or built-over royal quarter of Alexandria itself.

Leads, where the trail points now

• Kathleen Martinez's two-decade dig at Taposiris Magna, 25 miles west of Alexandria, is the live excavation, and the 2022 tunnel, 1,305 meters long and partly underwater, is the current lead to follow.
• Supporting finds at the temple, coins with Cleopatra's image, a headless royal statue, and a foundation deposit, suggest a royal link but no tomb yet.
• The competing theory puts the tomb in Alexandria's sunken and built-over royal quarter, where Franck Goddio's underwater survey of the harbor is the relevant work.
• Plutarch's account that Octavian allowed Antony and Cleopatra to be buried together is the key historical anchor for whoever digs.

The trail, in order

• 30 BC: Antony and Cleopatra die in Alexandria after the fall to Octavian.
• 2005: Kathleen Martinez begins excavating Taposiris Magna.
• 2022: a deep tunnel is found, possibly leading toward the tomb.

Sources and the record

• Taposiris Magna (Wikipedia)
• Searching for Cleopatra's lost tomb (National Geographic)