EL PAÍS offers the América Futura section for free for its daily and global informative contribution on sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.
If no one had frowned when he went to the bookshelf in his house to get the book Antony and Cleopatraby William Shakespeare, perhaps the story of the pharaoh would have gone unnoticed. But it was not so. Both her father and her friends, the most renowned intellectuals of the Dominican Republic, advised the then young Kathleen Martínez (Santo Domingo, 58 years old) to read “about someone more interesting” than Cleopatra. So she did with the advice what any teenager does: ignore it.
The book was followed by a film. Then the reading of the accounts left by Romans such as Pliny the Elder and, finally, the works of Plutarch and other historians. “We received the image of Roman propaganda, its worst enemies. And that is a dirty game. You cannot believe 100% what your enemies say about you,” he explains in a video call from his home in Los Angeles. That is why he considers that Cleopatra has gone down in history as an ugly and promiscuous woman. However, other experts They speak of a queen with a lot of power and a great conversationalist. She was the richest person in the world, an alchemist, a polyglot (she spoke the nine languages of the time), she was one of the first to carry out studies on foetuses and make-up and she financed the military campaigns of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. “They criticised her for being powerful and intelligent,” she says. Although the Dominican’s research is helping to rewrite her biography, Dr Martínez’s objective is another: to find her tomb. And she has been working on it for 20 years.
These two decades of research behind him seem to indicate that he is in the vicinity of the Taposiris Magna Temple, submerged under the sea, some 50 kilometres away. Although he does not rule out land, his latest activities are focused on what is today a military maritime zone never before explored for these purposes.
The mission led by Martínez has sparked great interest in the media and within the profession itself, including the famous Egyptologist and former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass, who has acknowledged the importance of his discoveries. However, the expert distances himself from his theory and believes that Cleopatra is in a tomb that “she herself ordered to be built next to her palace and that is now under water.”
There are currently at least two groups of archaeologists searching for the pharaoh near the Royal Palace. They have an estimated funding of around two million euros per year from the French government, the country leading in archaeological excavations. But Martínez has another hypothesis: “They have been looking for her for more than 200 years and she has not been found because they have been looking in the wrong place.” “How could she build a mausoleum of such magnitude in full view of the Romans? Where can you build a strong stone building that would go unnoticed if not near a temple of which it seems to be a part? It is a question of common sense,” he says.
Her theory is so revolutionary because it starts from a point of departure diametrically opposed to the traditional ones. The work of the great historians were the first crumbs that guided this lawyer and archaeologist on a path that seems like science fiction and that includes the discovery of more than 20 mummies, some with golden tongues – never seen in Egypt – 500 gold coins with the the face of the pharaoh, 1,800 archaeological pieces in an area of Egypt that was going to be declared a tourist attraction and two years of work side by side with Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who found the Titanic.
The first clue came after carefully reading these authors and discovering that, after the death of Mark Antony, the pharaoh’s lover, she went to visit him and returned “in the same day.” With this information she was able to delimit a perimeter 100 kilometers from the Royal Palace of Alexandria, which she later reduced to 45. Within this radius was the Taposiris Magna Temple, theoretically dedicated to the god Osiris, partner of Isis, a goddess whom Cleopatra believed to be the reincarnation. But for the Egyptologists to let her excavate, she needed much more than intuition. She needed to find the foundation plaque of the religious center that would prove that it was built in honor of her and be able to continue pulling the thread.
“Where others had failed for 200 years, we had the opportunity and the luck to find it. And indeed it indicated to us that the central temple was dedicated to this deity. It also allowed us to know that it was built in 180 BC. That is, it was contemporary,” he says. Since in ancient times the temples of related gods were built in pairs, one close to the other, the discovery raised another big question: So where is the temple dedicated to Isis?
The exploration of Taposiris led her to the discovery of previously unseen underground tunnels that at one point began to fill with salt water. Another clue that brought her closer to the most recent theory that this center is connected to the Mediterranean Sea. These tunnels 1,305 metres long and 25 metres deep, they pass beneath the road that connects Alexandria with Libya and a luxury hotel and may connect the temple with another of great dimensions. “They went unnoticed during the construction of the roads because they are very deep. But they are intact,” he says, as if he were telling it for the first time.
According to his studies, the catastrophes and tsunamis that destroyed Alexandria also flooded this second temple. “Today we can say that part of this religious centre was buried under the sea, without any information until now. Whether we find Cleopatra’s tomb there or not, this is the greatest discovery we have made to date. No one had ever found all these passages under the sea before.”
So Martinez had no choice but to learn to dive. After the first dive, in 2022, the Dominican asked for help, and not from just anyone. She sent an email to Dr. Ballard, thinking he would never respond. A few minutes later the email arrived. “He told me he was 80 years old and was thinking of retiring, but he wanted his epitaph to appear as the oceanographer who found the Titanic and also Cleopatra’s tomb.” So in September 2023 they dived again, this time with the 68 professional divers from the American and the Egyptian military corps, which was involved in an archaeological mission for the first time, where they took the first images of these sunken structures.
“I want it to be a Latin American achievement”
In September 2024, she will carry out excavations on the site for the first time, which will help shed more light on the investigation. The doctor does not hide her excitement or intrigue and believes that the discovery will be able to tell the world many things: “It can bring us a lot of information about a period about which almost nothing is known because none of the tombs of Greek pharaohs have been found.”
“Kathleen Martinez’s project has already helped provide a greater understanding of ancient Egyptian life, politics and culture, contributing to world heritage,” says José Santana, a collaborator on the archaeological project in the search for Cleopatra. He is one of 50 workers on the team. Most of them are Spanish and American.
For Martínez, finding the tomb would not be the end of the road. On the contrary. This woman with a calm tone and bright eyes when talking about her passion dreams of Latin America becoming a reference region in Egyptology at some point. But currently, in her country, archaeology is not even a university degree. Although she has received several offers from archaeologists from Harvard and Oxford, the doctor never joined them. “I did not accept because it would have been a foreign achievement. And I want it to be Latin American, to carry our flag,” says this woman who dreams of the creation of the Dominican Institute of Archaeology; the first center of its kind in Latin America. “We Latinos have a lot to offer, but we have not had the opportunity,” she concludes. “Sometimes I feel that I will not give up to be the one to open the door to those who come after me. I will not tire until I place us on the map of world archaeology.”
#Dominican #archaeologist #searching #Cleopatras #tomb #Latin #American #achievement