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The Search for Cleopatra by Zawi Hawas

1/26/2014

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PictureZawi Hawas
When I first set out to become an archaeologist, the mystery of Cleopatra already mesmerized me. At age 16, I enrolled as a student with the Faculty of Arts in the Archaeology Department of the University of Alexandria. I asked Dr. Fawzi El Fakhary, one of my professors, a question hovering in my mind for quite some time: Where was the tomb of Cleopatra? 

My professor believed her to be buried near her palace with Mark Antony, in a tomb that had long been lost beneath the depths of the ocean. My professor’s answer, however, was only an educated guess. 

He did not know where Cleopatra was buried, and this uncertainty only fueled the mounting flame of my curiosity. I used to visit the location that people thought was her palace and conjure her in my mind, marveling at how little we knew about Egypt’s last queen and how much remained to be discovered.

After graduating from the university, my interest in Cleopatra waned until, in 2004, Kathleen Martinez, a Dominican scholar of Greek and Roman history, explained her theory about Cleopatra. She described her as a philosopher and linguist, and a shrewd politician—a woman to be reckoned with. Kathleen was certain that Cleopatra and Mark Antony were buried together inside the temple of Taposiris Magna, a site located 45 kilometers [28 miles] west of Alexandria, far from the submerged tomb my professor had described. According to Kathleen, this temple represented the dwelling of the god Osiris, which possessed a profound meaning for Cleopatra, who frequently portrayed herself as the human representation of the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris. Mark Antony, Cleopatra’s lover leading up to her death, was often seen as the human manifestation of Osiris. Thus the temple of Taposiris may have held a deeply sentimental importance for this queen, who lost Antony just before Egypt fell to the Romans.

Kathleen had searched for Cleopatra’s tomb in other temples by carefully analyzing a wealth of architectural, archaeological, and iconographical evidence as well as the symbolism, chronology, and mythology surrounding these temples. The only possible burial place that embodied all the symbolism of divinity and religious ritual, while simultaneously conveying Cleopatra’s personal legacy, was Taposiris Magna.

Many have searched for the tomb of Alexander the Great, but no one had searched for that missing piece of ancient Egypt’s story—the tomb of Cleopatra, who took her own life rather than surrender her homeland to the Romans. This bright young scholar rekindled my old passion for the story of Cleopatra. It occurred to me that we had before us an opportunity to recover the last page in that the book of ancient Egyptian civilization, an opportunity we could not pass by. And so Kathleen and myself, together with an Egyptian archaeological team, began the search for Cleopatra’s tomb in hopes of removing some of the great mystery that hangs thick around this famous queen.



from: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/events/cleopatra/zahi-hawass/

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Goblecki Temple

1/26/2014

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Picture
There's more time between Gobekli Tepe and the Sumerian clay tablets [etched in 3300 B.C.] than from Sumer to today," says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who is familiar with Schmidt's work. "Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility."

Still, archaeologists have their theories—evidence, perhaps, of the irresistible human urge to explain the unexplainable. The surprising lack of evidence that people lived right there, researchers say, argues against its use as a settlement or even a place where, for instance, clan leaders gathered. Hodder is fascinated that Gobekli Tepe's pillar carvings are dominated not by edible prey like deer and cattle but by menacing creatures such as lions, spiders, snakes and scorpions. "It's a scary, fantastic world of nasty-looking beasts," he muses. While later cultures were more concerned with farming and fertility, he suggests, perhaps these hunters were trying to master their fears by building this complex, which is a good distance from where they lived.

Danielle Stordeur, an archaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, emphasizes the significance of the vulture carvings. Some cultures have long believed the high-flying carrion birds transported the flesh of the dead up to the heavens. Stordeur has found similar symbols at sites from the same era as Gobekli Tepe just 50 miles away in Syria. "You can really see it's the same culture," she says. "All the most important symbols are the same."

For his part, Schmidt is certain the secret is right beneath his feet. Over the years, his team has found fragments of human bone in the layers of dirt that filled the complex. Deep test pits have shown that the floors of the rings are made of hardened limestone. Schmidt is betting that beneath the floors he'll find the structures' true purpose: a final resting place for a society of hunters.

Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. If so, Gobekli Tepe's location was no accident. "From here the dead are looking out at the ideal view," Schmidt says as the sun casts long shadows over the half-buried pillars. "They're looking out over a hunter's dream."

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/?page=3

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The Temple of Hathor -- Cleopatra's Tomb

4/15/2009

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PictureTemple of Hathor
Dendera Temple complex, (Ancient Egyptian: Iunet or Tantere; the 19th-century English spelling in most sources, including Belzoni, was Tentyra) is located about 2.5 km south-east of Dendera, Egypt. 
It is one of the best preserved temples in Egypt. The area was used as the sixth Nome of Upper Egypt, south of Abydos.

The whole complex covers some 40,000 square meters and is surrounded by a hefty mud brick enclosed wall. Dendera was a site for chapels or shrines from the beginning of history of ancient Egypt. 

It seems that pharaoh Pepi I (ca. 2250 BC) built on this site and evidence exists of a temple in the eighteenth dynasty (ca 1500 BC). But the earliest extant building in the compound today is the Mammisi raised by Nectanebo II – last of the native pharaohs (360–343 BC).

PictureDendera Temple Complex
The features in the complex include

  • Hathor temple (the main temple),
  • Temple of the birth of Isis,
  • Sacred Lake,
  • Sanatorium,
  • Mammisi of Nectanebo II,
  • Christian Basilica,
  • Roman Mammisi,
  • a Bark shine,
  • Gateways of Domitian & Trajan and
  • the Roman Kiosk.

PictureReliefs of Cleopatra VII and her son by Julius Caesar
The all overshadowing building in the Complex is the main temple, namely Hathor temple (historically, called the Temple of Tentyra). 

The temple has been modified on the same site starting as far back as the Middle Kingdom, and continuing right up until the time of the Roman emperor Trajan. 

The existing structure was built no later than the late Ptolemaic period. The temple, dedicated to Hathor, is one of the best preserved temples in all Egypt. 

Subsequent additions were added in Roman times.

PictureCeiling of the Temple
Depictions of Cleopatra VI which appear on temple walls are good examples Ptolemaic Egyptian art. One depicts Cleopatra and her son, Caesarion. On the rear of the temple exterior is a carving of Cleopatra VII Philopator and her son, Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar, fathered by Julius Caesar.

PictureDendera Zodiac
The sculptured Dendera zodiac (or Denderah zodiac) is a widely known relief found in a late Greco-Roman temple, containing images of Taurus (the bull) and the Libra (the balance).


A sketch was made of it during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt. and in 1820 it was removed from the ceiling and is now in the Louvre. 


Champollion's guess that it was Ptolemaic proved correct and Egyptologists now date it to the first century BC, the time when Cleopatra would have studied magic and astrology under the tutelage of the priests of Isis and Osiris.

PictureThe Dendera Light
Hathor Temple has a relief sometimes known as the Dendera Light because of a controversial fringe thesis about its nature. 

The Dendera light images comprise five stone reliefs (two of which contain a pair of what fringe authors refer to as lights) in the Hathor temple at the Dendera Temple complex located in Egypt. 

The view of Egyptologists is that the relief is a mythological depiction of a djed pillar and a lotus flower, spawning a snake within, representing aspects of Egyptian mythology. 

In contrast to this interpretation, there is a fringe science suggestion that it is actually a representation of an Ancient Egyptian lightbulb. 
These depictions are much more related to the magic rituals of the priests of Isis and Osiris of which Cleopatra was an initiate, than of any ancient alien or super civilization technology. Because of Cleopatra's powerful magical worldview--inculcated in her from birth by the priests--it is no wonder that she thought she could command her armies from a darkened room, by communing in a quartz mirror. The Sphere of Destiny in the Temple of Isis, now underwater in the Harbor of Alexandria, was the room in which the mystical glass known as the Eye of Cleopatra was harbored.

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Archaeologists Close to Finding Cleopatra's Tomb

4/15/2009

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PictureZahi Hawass displays a Ptolemaic statue discovered at Taposiris Magna, in northern Egypt.
They are among history's most famous lovers - Antony and Cleopatra, the Roman warrior and the Egyptian queen.  

From Shakespeare to Hollywood, their story has been told many times. Now, Egypt's top archaeologist, with his own touch of Hollywood style, says he may be closing in on Cleopatra's tomb. On a recent sunny day west of Alexandria, Zahi Hawass strides across the rock and rubble of Taposiris Magna, a Ptolemaic temple overlooking the shores of the Mediterranean.   

Wearing his trademark Indiana Jones hat, he explains that although others have scoured the temple before, this current dig, begun in 2005, has turned up countless new treasures. He says the team has located the original main entrance and uncovered a series of pharaonic-style entrance blocks.  There is also a statue, which Hawass, giving the headless torso a playful pat, says is likely that of Ptolemy IV, one of Cleopatra's ancestors.  "That is really important discoveries " he says,"in the search for the beautiful, magical queen - Queen Cleopatra."

The idea of Taposiris as the burial place of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, who killed themselves rather than submit to Antony's rival Octavian, was proposed by a young Dominican archaeologist, Kathleen Martinez.  She tries to evoke the couple's last days, the end of Egypt as an empire.  "She has to choose a place that she must be safe after life," she says, because "the Romans hated her so much, they will search for her body and they will destroy it."

Martinez notes that, significantly, the temple is dedicated to Isis and Osiris, ancient gods to whom the couple often compared themselves. But she says she is most excited about discovering a tunnel that bores straight down into bedrock.   The team has devised a special winch that has already gone down 35 meters.   She says she expects there will soon be "important news." 

I ask if she will show us down the tunnel.  She consults with Hawass, who decides to go himself.  The improvised winch lowers the archeologist into the narrow, dark shaft.  

And then it stops.   The cables are twisted and Hawass is stranded 10-meters underground. 

Workers, who only rigged the contraption a week before, struggle for a long 15 minutes to straighten the wires.  One man grabs a rope as back-up.  Onlookers resort to awkward banter, fixing blame for my suggestion.    Then Hawass starts to spin himself around in the cramped space, untangling the cables.

The winch re-engages and the archeologist rises to the surface.  In mock anger, he takes a menacing step toward me and pretends to land a punch. 

The moment is vintage Hawass.  It probably should have belonged to Martinez, but Hawass takes the spotlight.  He fills the scene with genuine drama, makes his usually nervous employees only more so, and ends up providing the entertainment. 

At 62, the Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities is going through his own Golden Age.  Hawass is the top archaeologist in arguably the world's richest archeological land, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, star of countless television programs, a prolific columnist and man-about-town. 

Most recently, he has championed the return of ancient artifacts to their homelands, becoming a hero to others who have seen their heritage plundered.   He can be shameless in his quest to get things back. He tells a story about a woman from Canada, who insisted on being repaid the 10,000 pounds sterling she spent on it.  "I wrote her a letter to say that if she will keep this statue, the curse of the Pharaohs will rest on her," he says, adding that the next day, she handed the piece over.  

He also takes pride in emphasizing the Egyptian, a parallel to Cleopatra - a Ptolemaic leader of Egyptian heritage who was the first to bother learning the local language.  The archeologist is the first of his countrymen to be the international face of Egyptology, a field long dominated by Western Europeans.  It is an image he feels important to project both abroad and at home.   

He describes children coming up to him on the streets of Cairo, asking "'When are you sending the robot inside the pyramid?'   And you have to know,"  he says,  "there is a revival now among Egyptians loving their antiquities." 

Not that mummies and pyramids are a hard sell.   But his excitement and verve are catching and, on occasion, one suspects, overwhelming.  I ask if his seemingly outsize persona ever poses a problem.  "God gave me this talent,"  he says.  "I will not tell him no." 

It is a belief in self that lessens any surprise that his latest discoveries have an international tie-in.   Next month, a major museum exhibit called Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt, will open in the United States.  And Hawass, with his enthusiasm, will be on hand.

From: http://www.voanews.com/content/archeologists-may-be-closing-in-on-cleopatras-tomb-93416909/117501.html


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    Marcus Devol

    I am an archaeologist and adventurer. I love dogs, food, wine, and books. Most of all, I love to dig.

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