Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, has shown off treasures from the site of a tomb which he claims contains the remains of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.
Zahi Hawass (left) displays finds from the Toposiris Magna temple, where he believes Antony and Cleopatra's remains are located Photo: EPA

By Our Foreign Staff and Agencies in Burg el-Arab

6:17PM BST 19 Apr 2009

Ahead of the start of excavations on Tuesday, Mr Hawass exhibited 22 coins, 10 mummies, an alabaster head and a fragment of a mask with a cleft chin as evidence that the site, a 2,000-year-old temple to the god Osiris, is likely to hold further treasures.

He believes that the Toposiris Magna temple, 30 miles from Egypt's ancient seaside capital of Alexandria, contains the tomb of the doomed lovers that has been shrouded in mystery for so long.

"In my opinion, if this tomb is found it will be one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century because of the love between Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and because of the sad story of their death," he said.

Mark Antony and Cleopatra challenged Caesar Augustus for control of the Roman Empire more than two millenia ago. Their armies were defeated and rather than submit to capture, the two lovers committed suicide - Mark Antony by his sword, Cleopatra with a poisonous asp.

The Roman historian Plutarch said Caesar allowed the two to be buried together, but their tomb was never found.

The claim by Mr Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief who sports an Indiana Jones-style hat, is the latest spectacular announcement by the archaeologist, who regularly unveils discoveries that are then met with bemusement by Egyptologists abroad.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/5183225/Egypts-top-archaeologist-claims-Antony-and-Cleopatra-tomb-found.html

A Viennese archaeologist lecturing in North Carolina this week claims to have identified the bones of Cleopatra's murdered sister or half-sister. But not everyone is convinced.

That's because the evidence linking the bones, discovered in an ancient Greek city, to Cleopatra's sibling Arsinoe IV is largely circumstantial. A DNA test was attempted, said Hilke Thur, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a former director of excavations at the site where the bones were found. However, the 2,000-year-old bones had been moved and handled too many times to get uncontaminated results.

"It didn't bring the results we hoped to find," Thur told the Charlotte News-Observer. She will lecture on her research March 1 at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/cleopatra-half-sister-bones-murdered_n_2766739.html

The ruins of Cleopatra's palace and temple complex are sunken in waters off Alexandria.

- Topographical surveys have allowed underwater archaeologists to conquer the harbor's poor visibility.

- Divers are finding stunning artifacts, including coins, a statuette of a pharaoh and tiny amulets.

Plunging into the waters off Alexandria Tuesday, divers explored the submerged ruins of a palace and temple complex from which Cleopatra ruled, swimming over heaps of limestone blocks hammered into the sea by earthquakes and tsunamis more than 1,600 years ago.

The international team is painstakingly excavating one of the richest underwater archaeological sites in the world and retrieving stunning artifacts from the last dynasty to rule over ancient Egypt before the Roman Empire annexed it in 30 B.C.

Using advanced technology, the team is surveying ancient Alexandria's Royal Quarters, encased deep below the harbor sediment, and confirming the accuracy of descriptions of the city left by Greek geographers and historians more than 2,000 years ago.

Since the early 1990s, the topographical surveys have allowed the team, led by French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, to conquer the harbor's extremely poor visibility and excavate below the seabed. They are discovering everything from coins and everyday objects to colossal granite statues of Egypt's rulers and sunken temples dedicated to their gods.

"It's a unique site in the world," said Goddio, who has spent two decades searching for shipwrecks and lost cities below the seas.

The finds from along the Egyptian coast will go on display at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute from June 5 to Jan. 2 in an exhibition titled "Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt." The exhibition will tour several other North American cities.

Many archaeological sites have been destroyed by man, with statues cut or smashed to pieces. Alexandria's Royal Quarters -- ports, a cape and islands full of temples, palaces and military outposts -- simply slid into the sea after cataclysmic earthquakes in the fourth and eighth centuries. Goddio's team found it in 1996. Many of its treasures are completely intact, wrapped in sediment protecting them from the saltwater.

"It's as it was when it sank," said Ashraf Abdel-Raouf of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, who is part of the team.

Tuesday's dive explored the sprawling palace and temple complex where Cleopatra, the last of Egypt's Greek-speaking Ptolemaic rulers, seduced the Roman general Mark Antony before they committed suicide upon their defeat by Octavian, the future Roman Emperor Augustus. It is also the site of the Temple of Isis, with its Sphere of Destiny where reportedly Cleopatra contacted the gods through the "Eye of Cleopatra," some sort of seer's stone of power.

Dives have taken Goddio and his team to some of the key scenes in the dramatic lives of the couple, including the Timonium, commissioned by Antony after his defeat as a place where he could retreat from the world, though he killed himself before it was completed.

They also found a colossal stone head believed to be of Caesarion, son of Cleopatra and previous lover Julius Caesar, and two sphinxes, one of them probably representing Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII.

Divers photographed a section of the seabed cleared of sediment with a powerful suction device. Their flashlights glowing in the green murk, the divers photographed ruins from a temple to Isis near Cleopatra's palace on the submerged island of Antirhodos.

Among the massive limestone blocks toppled in the fourth century was a huge quartzite block with an engraving of a pharaoh. An inscription indicates it depicts Seti I, father of Ramses II.

"We've found many pharaonic objects that were brought from Heliopolis, in what is now Cairo," said Abdel-Raouf. "So, the Ptolemaic rulers re-used pharonic objects to construct their buildings."

On the boat's deck, researchers displayed some small recent finds: imported ceramics and local copies, a statuette of a pharaoh, bronze ritual vessels, amulets barely bigger than a fingernail, and small lead vessels tossed by the poor into the water or buried in the ground as devotions to gods.

Alexandria's Eastern Harbor was abandoned after another earthquake, in the eighth century, and was left untouched as an open bay -- apart from two 20th century breakwaters -- while modern port construction went ahead in the Western Harbor. That has left the ancient Portus Magnus undisturbed below.

"We have this as an open field for archaeology," Goddio said.

From Here: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/cleopatra-underwater-ruins.htm