In search of Cleopatra

Twenty years after she began exploring a neglected site in Egypt, self-taught archaeologist Kathleen Martínez has discovered unexpected treasures and believes she is closer than ever to unlocking the secrets of Egypt's last queen.

- WORDS by GENEVIEVE GANNON

After 60 days of futile digging under the glare of the Egyptian sun, Dominican lawyer Kathleen Martínez was beginning to lose hope. The then-Minister for Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, had told her there was nothing of value at the former site of Taposiris Magna, 60km west of Alexandria, but she was convinced it was worth exploring. So convinced, in fact, that she had self-funded a team of workers to help her dig up the barren limestone site. Her goal was to uncover the lost tomb of Cleopatra. The year was 2004. The minister had given her two months, and time was running out.

“Everybody was disappointed,” she said back in 2015. Their search hadn’t uncovered anything. “We didn’t find any pottery, nothing.”

From her childhood in the Dominican Republic, Kathleen had always been enchanted by archaeology, but her parents had urged her to choose a more traditional career. She became a criminal lawyer but she never lost her interest in excavating historical treasures, or her fascination with the last Queen of Egypt.

“I don’t think 100 per cent like an archaeologist because my first training is as a criminal lawyer. So, I took Cleopatra as a case,” Kathleen said in the 2019 documentary Cleopatra’s Lost Tomb.

For Kathleen, the search for Cleopatra is more than a treasure hunt. It’s about the restoration of the reputation of a brilliant and misunderstood monarch.

People hear Cleopatra’s name and think of a conniving temptress with hypnotic beauty, yet academics will tell you nobody really knows what she looks like. Most evidence of how the last Queen of Egypt lived and died has vanished. Her reputation as a powerful seductress comes largely from the writing of men who were her enemies.