Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon
"The Cleopatra icon has remained powerful over time because she signifies reinvention," Royster declares in this academic study of the Queen of the Nile. Divided into two parts, "Cleopatra and the White Imaginary" and "Cleopatra and African American Counternarratives," Royster's book makes frequent reference to Shakespeare's famous romance, Antony and Cleopatra, in which Cleopatra and Antony's relationship "might be viewed as a central paradigm for the ways that the multiple energy of black women's bodies can be appropriated and sold back to us." But the author's primary goal is to examine how modern film and stage depictions have functioned "as a means of performing and often deconstructing racial and gender subjectivity." Individual chapters, and close shot-by-shot analyses are devoted to the performances of Elizabeth Taylor, Josephine Baker, Queen Latifah, Tamara Dobson and Vivien Leigh. Royster, an associate English professor at DePaul Univ., has crafted a dense but readable book, especially appropriate for women in film courses. Photos.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Friday, July 29, 2011
"Like" Cleopatra's Voice Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/CleopatrasVoice
If you like Being Cleopatra, then become a fan! I would really appreciate your support! http://www.facebook.com/CleopatrasVoice
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Being Cleopatra: Lillie Langtry
Lillie Langtry (1853-1929) being Cleopatra in 96 performances of Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare at the Princess's Theatre in London from November 18, 1890, until February 21, 1891.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Search for Cleopatra Continues
The Search for Cleopatra Continues
By Past Horizons Adventures in Archeology
The recent radar survey is a significant step forward and was carried out by an Egyptian team, with American expert Dr. Roger Vickers serving as a consultant. The radar revealed three possible areas of interest where a tomb may be located. These locations have been passed to the archaeological team who received the results of the survey with great interest, and will begin excavation of the targets next week.
The most important recent development at Taposiris Magna has been the discovery of a large, previously unknown cemetery outside the temple enclosure.
The expedition has found 27 tombs, twenty of them shaped like vaulted sarcophagi, partly underground and partly above ground. The remaining seven consist of staircases leading to simple burial chambers. Inside these tombs, the team has found a total of ten mummies, two of them gilded. The discovery of this cemetery indicates that an important person, likely of royal status, could be buried inside the temple. It was common for officials and other high-status individuals in Egypt to construct their tombs close to those of their rulers throughout the Pharaonic period. The style of the newly discovered tombs indicates that they were constructed during the Greco-Roman period.
Dr. Martinez stated that the expedition has been excavating a temple at Taposiris Magna dedicated to the goddess Isis, and even discovered coins depicting the face of Alexander the Great.
They have found a number of deep shafts inside the temple, three of which seem to have been used for burials. It is possible that these shafts were the tombs of important people, and the team’s leaders believe that Cleopatra and Mark Antony could have been buried in a deep shaft similar to those already discovered inside the temple.
Dr. Hawass said that the expedition has so far found a beautiful head of Cleopatra, along with 22 coins bearing her image. The statue and coins show her as a beauty, contradicting the idea recently suggested that the Queen was quite ugly.
The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm that could have captured the hearts of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive. Moreover, the features of the sculpted head show no sign of African ancestry, contradicting a recently advanced theory. The team has also found many amulets, along with a beautiful headless statue dating to the Ptolemaic Period. Among the most interesting finds is a unique mask depicting a man with a cleft chin which bears some similarity to known portraits of Mark Antony himself.
Click here to read The Search for Cleopatra Continues from the blog Past Horizons Adventures in Archeology
UPDATE: The blog Rogue Classicism responds to this article: "As presented, that item makes it sound like digging is actually going on right now at Taposiris Magna and — apparently relying on a ‘press release’ from Zahi Hawass’ site (someone please tell me if I err in this regard) — talks about such novelties as ground penetrating radar surveys being done by Richard Vickers and identifying three places of interest. Sadly, however, it has to be pointed out that the press release actually comes from April 2009 (we mentioned it in a previous post, of course: Cleopatra’s Tomb Again!!) and once again we might wonder why Dr Hawass never bothered to put dates on items. Even if we forgive that, however, we wonder why Past Horizons didn’t notice the November 2009 date of the Heritage Key video (via youtube) which they also link to"
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Cleopatra Through the Artist's Eye: Thomas Ridgeway Gould
Cleopatra
Thomas Ridgeway Gould
1873
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Being Cleopatra: Thandie Newton
Thandie Newton being Cleopatra in a photoshoot that advertised the 2010 Virgin Media Shorts film competition which recognizes UK film talent. Actress Thandie Newton was a judge that year for the competition. In these photos, by Lorenzo Aguis, Newton reinacts scenes from the 1917 silent film, Cleopatra, which starred the sex symbol Theda Bara.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Decline in tourism effects the preservation of ancient Egypt
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The revolution in Egypt has resulted in a decline in tourism, this, consequently, has effects the money put into the preservation of ancient Egypt.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Many Faces of Cleopatra
The most famous woman of ancient times has been portrayed by some of the most famous women of cinema, including Gone With the Wind’s Vivien Leigh, the original movie vamp Theda Bara, the sultry Claudette Colbert of classic Hollywood, the luscious Sophia Loren, beautiful Rhonda Fleming and of course superstar Elizabeth Taylor in the most notorious version of Cleopatra of all. Along with profiles of these and other stars are those of the directors and producers behind the camera such as Cecil B. DeMille who have put their stamp on the Cleopatra legend. Included are interviews with Rhonda Fleming and others, clips from both well known productions and some of the more obscure films from archival sources, with rare behind the scenes footage of the making of these epic spectacle along with clips from parodies of movie Cleopatras, plus a survey pf other queens of antiquity and fantasy who have made their mark on the movies.Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Being Cleopatra: Catriona Leger
Catriona Leger being Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (July 4, 2011 –Aug. 20, 2011) coming to Parks all across Ottawa, ON!
Antony and Cleopatra is hands-down Shakespeare’s funniest tragedy. It’s hard to believe the Fools have never tackled this dramatic duo before. After all,the famous lovers are as worthy of mockery as any Hollywood couple (Clantony? Antopatra? TMZ is still working on the nickname). Cleo is queen of the divas. One minute she’s the embodiment of style and grace, the next minute she’s the most petulant of spoiled brats. Tony is the Roman Empire’s answer to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. He neglects his wife and his state for the love of a seductress from way down south. As Tony dallies in Egypt with his celebrity paramour, the Roman Empire is coming apart at the seams. Conspiracies, double-crosses and back-stabbing abound in the power vacuum left behind in his absence. Finally, forced to choose between love and duty, Antony flip-flops between being a heroic leader and a hen-pecked lapdog faster than a pancake cook at IHOP. Cleo tries to stand by her man, but can’t keep herself from pulling his strings. From full-on sea battles to a botched “noble end” that is literally gut-wrenching, Antony and Cleopatra is tragedy on hyperbolic steroids. In the hands of a Company of Fools, all that over-wrought mayhem translates into pure comedy gold. It’s so OTT you’ll LOL when A+C are DEAD.
Performances begin each evening at 7:00 p.m. Admission is: “pass-the-hat-pay-what-you-can” with a suggested minimum donation of $10.
Directed by David Whiteley.
Starring: Katie Bunting, Richard Gélinas, Catriona Leger, Cari Leslie, Stewart Matthews & Geoff McBride
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
A horse named Cleopatra
Cleopatra (foaled 1917 in Kentucky) was an American Champion Thoroughbred filly racehorse. Her sire was the one of Great Britian]]'s top stallions Corcyra, a son of three-time the Leading sire in Great Britain and Ireland Polymelus. Her dam was Gallice, a daughter of Gallinule. [1] Cleopatra will best be remembered for her easy victory in the second running of the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes on May 17, 1920.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Cleopatra exhibit moves to Milwaukee
The traveling National Geographic exhibit, Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt, is moving to a new home. On October 14, 2011, the Cleopatra exhibit will be at The Milwaukee Public Museum.Tickets for the exhibit go on sale starting Tuesday online at www.mpm.edu or at (414) 223-4676 or (888) 700-9069.
Ticket prices:
Adults: $27.50 Mon-Thur; $29.50 Fri-Sun
Seniors (60 and older): $23.50 Mon-Thur; $25.50 Fri-Sun
Students & Teens (13-17): $23.50 Mon-Thur; $25.50 Fri-Sun
Children (3 to 12 years old): $19 Mon-Thur; $20 Fri-Sun
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Being Cleopatra: Lizzie Hopley
Lizzie Hopley being Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare being performed July 8, 2011 - September 3, 2011 at the Creation Theatre located at the Saïd Business School at Park End Street in Oxford.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Being Cleopatra: Allison Strickland
Allison Strickland being Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra with Green Stage Shakespeare in the Park (July 8, 2011 - August 13, 2011) coming to parks in the Seattle, WA area.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Roman Era Basilica Unearthed In Egypt
Team unearths first Roman-era basilica in Egypt
CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian officials say archaeologists have unearthed the first basilica erected in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.
Antiquities authorities say the basilica is dated to the Roman era and was built on the ruins of a temple from the Ptolemaic reign that ended with the death of Cleopatra.
A statement Thursday says two parallel rows of granite and limestone pillars suggest the basilica was a social site that was also used for trade and judicial matters.
It says several statues of the Ancient Egyptian goddess Isis — one showing her breast-feeding — and others of the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis also have been unearthed during five months of excavations that ended in May when archaeologists hit underground water.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Cleopatra: A Life is listed as one of the "best nonfiction books" of all time
The New York Times' staff has listed Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff as one of the "best nonfiction books" of all time
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Being Cleopatra: Joni Harris
Joni Harris being Cleopatra in A Short History of Dating by Matt Thompson with the New Vision Theatre Company in Oceanside, CA July 1, 2011 - July 17, 2011. Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Being Cleopatra: Kaitlyn Rietdyk
Kaitlyn Rietdyk being Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare with the University of Western Ontario (UWO) in Ontario, Canada.July 5, 2011 - July 9, 2011 at 7:30pm. At the outdoor courtyard on the west side. In case of bad weather we move inside to UC room 204. Folding chairs on risers will be available, but you are welcome to bring your own chairs or cushions for more comfort. Tickets $15 general admission, $10 for students and seniors.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
National Geographic: Searching for the Real Cleopatra
The Search for Cleopatra
Archaeologists search for the true face—and the burial place—of the “world’s first celebrity.”
By Chip Brown
Photograph by Kenneth Garrett
Where, oh where is Cleopatra? She's everywhere, of course—her name immortalized by slot machines, board games, dry cleaners, exotic dancers, and even a Mediterranean pollution-monitoring project. She is orbiting the sun as the asteroid 216 Kleopatra. Her "bath rituals and decadent lifestyle" are credited with inspiring a perfume. Today the woman who ruled as the last pharaoh of Egypt and who is alleged to have tested toxic potions on prisoners is instead poisoning her subjects as the most popular brand of cigarettes in the Middle East.
In the memorable phrase of critic Harold Bloom, she was the "world's first celebrity." If history is a stage,no actress was ever so versatile: royal daughter, royal mother, royal sister from a family that makes the Sopranos look like the Waltons. When not serving as a Rorschach test of male fixations, Cleopatra is an inexhaustible muse. To a recent best-selling biography add—from 1540 to 1905—five ballets, 45 operas, and 77 plays. She starred in at least seven films; an upcoming version will feature Angelina Jolie.
Yet if she is everywhere, Cleopatra is also nowhere, obscured in what biographer Michael Grant called the "fog of fiction and vituperation which has surrounded her personality from her own lifetime onwards." Despite her reputed powers of seduction, there is no reliable depiction of her face. What images do exist are based on unflattering silhouettes on coins. There is an unrevealing 20-foot-tall relief on a temple at Dendera, and museums display a few marble busts, most of which may not even be of Cleopatra.
Ancient historians praised her allure, not her looks. Certainly she possessed the ability to roil passions in two powerful Roman men: Julius Caesar, with whom she had one son; and Mark Antony, who would be her lover for more than a decade and the father of three more children. But her beauty, said Greek historian Plutarch, was not "the sort that would astound those who saw her; interaction with her was captivating, and her appearance, along with her persuasiveness in discussion and her character that accompanied every interchange, was stimulating. Pleasure also came with the tone of her voice, and her tongue was like a many-stringed instrument."
People have been puzzling over the whereabouts of Cleopatra's tomb since she was last seen in her mausoleum in the legendary deathbed tableau, adorned with diadem and royal finery and reposed on what Plutarch described as a golden couch. After Caesar's assassination, his heir Octavian battled Antony for control of the Roman Empire for more than a decade; following Antony and Cleopatra's defeat at Actium, Octavian's forces entered Alexandria in the summer of 30 B.C. Cleopatra barricaded herself behind her mausoleum's massive doors, amid stores of gold, silver, pearls, art, and other treasures that she vowed to torch lest they fall into Roman hands.
It was to the mausoleum that Antony, dying of self-inflicted sword wounds, was brought on the first of August so he might take a last sip of wine and perish in Cleopatra's arms. And it may have been in the mausoleum where, ten days or so after Antony's death, Cleopatra herself escaped the humiliation of defeat and captivity by committing suicide at the age of 39, reputedly with the venom of an asp. The Roman historian Dio Cassius reported that Cleopatra's body was embalmed as Antony's had been, and Plutarch noted that on the orders of Octavian, the last queen of Egypt was buried beside her defeated Roman consort. Sixteen centuries later Shakespeare proclaimed: "No grave upon the earth shall clip in it / a pair so famous."
And yet we have no idea where that grave might be. The wealth of attention paid to Cleopatra by artists seems inversely proportional to the poverty of material generated about her by archaeologists. Alexandria and its environs attracted less attention than the more ancient sites along the Nile, such as the Pyramids at Giza or the monuments at Luxor. And no wonder: Earthquakes, tidal waves, rising seas, subsiding ground, civil conflicts, and the unsentimental recycling of building stones have destroyed the ancient quarter where for three centuries Cleopatra and her ancestors lived. Most of the glory that was ancient Alexandria now lies about 20 feet underwater.
In the past few decades archaeologists have finally taken up the mystery of Cleopatra's whereabouts and are searching for her burial place in earnest. Underwater excavations begun in 1992 by French explorer Franck Goddio and his European Institute of Underwater Archaeology have allowed researchers to map out the drowned portions of ancient Alexandria, its piers and esplanades, the sunken ground once occupied by royal palaces. The barnacled discoveries brought to the sea's surface—massive stone sphinxes, giant limestone paving blocks, granite columns and capitals—whet the appetite for a better understanding of Cleopatra's world.
"My dream is to find a statue of Cleopatra—with a cartouche," says Goddio. So far, however, the underwater work has failed to yield a tomb. The only signs of Cleopatra the divers have encountered are the empty cigarette packs that bear her name, drifting in the water as they work.
More recently, a desert temple outside Alexandria has become the focus of another search, one that asks whether a monarch of Cleopatra's calculation and foresight might have provided a tomb for herself in a place more spiritually significant than downtown Alexandria—some sacred spot where her mummified remains could rest undisturbed beside her beloved Antony.
In November 2006 at his office in Cairo, Zahi Hawass, then secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, pulled out a sheet of Nile Hilton stationery. On it he had sketched the highlights of an archaeological site where he and a team of scientists and excavators had been digging over the previous year. "We are searching for the tomb of Cleopatra," he said, excitedly. "Never before has anyone systematically looked for the last queen of Egypt." This particular quest had begun when a woman from the Dominican Republic named Kathleen Martinez contacted Hawass in 2004 and came to share a theory she'd developed: that Cleopatra might be buried in a tumbledown temple near the coastal desert town of Taposiris Magna (present-day Abu Sir), 28 miles west of Alexandria.
Located between the Mediterranean and Lake Mareotis, the ancient city of Taposiris Magna had been a prominent port town during Cleopatra's time. Its vineyards were famous for their wine. The geographer Strabo, who was in Egypt in 25 B.C., mentioned that Taposiris staged a great public festival, most likely in honor of the god Osiris. Nearby was a rocky seaside beach, he said, "where crowds of people in the prime of life assemble during every season of the year."
"I thought before we started digging that Cleopatra would be buried facing the palace in Alexandria, in the royal tombs area," said Hawass. But in time, Martinez's reasoning persuaded him another theory might be worth exploring: that Cleopatra had been clever enough to make sure she and Antony were secretly buried where no one would disturb their eternal life together.
A child prodigy who'd earned her law degree at the age of 19, Kathleen Martinez was teaching archaeology at the University of Santo Domingo, but it was an avocation; she'd never been to Egypt or handled a trowel. She traced her obsession with Cleopatra to an argument she'd had with her father in 1990, when she was 24 years old. She wandered into his library one day looking for a copy of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Her father, Fausto Martínez, a professor and legal scholar normally quite careful in his judgments, disparaged the famous queen as a trollop. "How can you say that!" she protested. After an hours-long debate in which Kathleen argued that Roman propaganda and centuries of bias against women had distorted Cleopatra's character, Professor Martínez conceded that his opinion of Cleopatra might have been unfair.
From that moment Martinez resolved to learn everything she could about the queen. She pored over the canonical texts, particularly Plutarch's account of Mark Antony's alliance with Cleopatra. It seemed clear that the Romans had beenintent on depicting her (at worst) as a decadent and lustful despot and (at best) as a manipulative politician who'd played the bitter factions of the emerging Roman superpower against each other in a desperate bid to preserve Egypt's autonomy. It was also possible that modern-day researchers might have missed important clues about where Cleopatra was buried.
"You cannot find anything in any ancient writing about where Cleopatra is buried," Martinez said. "But I believe she prepared everything, from the way she lived to the way she died to the way she wanted to be found."
In 2004 she emailed Hawass. She did not receive a reply. Unable to have herself smuggled into Hawass's office inside a sack—the famous stratagem by which the 21-year-old Cleopatra is supposed to have acquainted herself with Julius Caesar in 48 B.C.—Martinez assailed him with emails, upwards of a hundred by her estimate. Again, no reply. She headed for Cairo and eventually wangled an audience with Hawass through a guide who had worked for the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
"Who are you and what do you want?" Hawass asked when Martinez arrived in his office in the fall of 2004. She did not explain that she was searching for Cleopatra, worried that he would lump her in with the nuts who believe aliens built the pyramids. "I want to visit places that aren't open to the public," Martinez explained. Hawass granted her permission to visit sites in Alexandria, Giza, and Cairo.
Martinez returned to Egypt in March 2005, calling on Hawass with the news that she had been appointed an ambassador of culture by the Dominican Republic. He laughed and said she was too young to be an ambassador. She told him she'd visited Taposiris Magna the previous year and wanted to go back. There were remnants of a Coptic church on the site, and Dominicans were interested in the history of Christianity. Hawass again said yes.
After she had photographed and walked the site, she again called on Hawass. "You have two minutes," he said. The time had come to drop the veil. Martinez explained to him that she wanted to excavate at Taposiris. "I have a theory," she said, and finally confided that she thought Taposiris Magnawas where Cleopatra was buried.
"What?" said Hawass, grabbing his chair. A group of Hungarian archaeologists had just concluded excavations at the site, and French archaeologists had excavated Roman baths just outside the walls of the temple. Plans were pending to turn Taposiris Magna into a tourist attraction.
"Give me two months," Martinez countered. "I will find her."
Cleopatra VII was born in Egypt, but she was descended from a lineage of Greek kings and queens who had ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years. The Ptolemies of Macedonia are one of history's most flamboyant dynasties, famous not only for wealth and wisdom but also for bloody rivalries and the sort of "family values" that modern-day exponents of the phrase would surely disavow, seeing as they included incest and fratricide.
The Ptolemies came to power after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, who in a caffeinated burst of activity beginning in 332 B.C. swept through Lower Egypt, displaced the hated Persian occupiers, and was hailed by the Egyptians as a divine liberator. He was recognized as pharaoh in the capital, Memphis. Along a strip of land between the Mediterranean and Lake Mareotis he laid out a blueprint for Alexandria, which would serve as Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years.
After Alexander's death in 323 B.C., Egypt was given to Ptolemy, one of his trusted generals, who, in a brilliant bit of marketing, hijacked the hearse bearing Alexander's body back to Greece and enshrined it in a tomb in Alexandria. Ptolemy was crowned pharaoh in 304 B.C. on the anniversary of Alexander's death. He made offerings to the Egyptian gods, took an Egyptian throne name, and portrayed himself in pharaonic garb.
The dynasty's greatest legacy was Alexandria itself, with its hundred-foot-wide main avenue, its gleaming limestone colonnades, its harborside palaces and temples overseen by a towering lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, on the island of Pharos. Alexandria soon became the largest, most sophisticated city on the planet. It was a teeming cosmopolitan mix of Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Romans, Nubians, and other peoples. The best and brightest of the Mediterranean world came to study at the Mouseion, the world's first academy, and at the great Alexandria library.
It was there, 18 centuries before the Copernican revolution, that Aristarchus posited a heliocentric solar system and Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth. Alexandria was where the Hebrew Bible was first translated into Greek and where the poet Sotades the Obscene discovered the limits of artistic freedom when he unwisely scribbled some scurrilous verse about Ptolemy II's incestuous marriage to his sister. He was deep-sixed in a lead-lined chest.
The Ptolemies' talent for intrigue was exceeded only by their flair for pageantry. If descriptions of the first dynastic festival of the Ptolemies around 280 B.C. are accurate, the party would cost millions of dollars today. The parade was a phantasmagoria of music, incense, blizzards of doves, camels laden with cinnamon, elephants in golden slippers, bulls with gilded horns. Among the floats was a 15-foot Dionysus pouring a libation from a golden goblet.
Where could they go from there but down? By the time Cleopatra VII ascended the throne in 51 B.C. at age 18, the Ptolemaic empire was crumbling. The lands of Cyprus, Cyrene (eastern Libya), and parts of Syria had been lost; Roman troops were soon to be garrisoned in Alexandria itself. Still, despite drought and famine and the eventual outbreak of civil war, Alexandria was a glittering city compared to provincial Rome. Cleopatra was intent on reviving her empire, not by thwarting the growing power of the Romans but by making herself useful to them, supplying them with ships and grain, and sealing her alliance with the Roman general Julius Caesar with a son, Caesarion.
Lest her subjects resent her Roman overtures, Cleopatra embraced Egypt's traditions. She is said to have been the first Ptolemaic pharaoh to bother to learn the Egyptian language. While it was politic for foreign overlords to adopt local deities and appease the powerful religious class, the Ptolemies were genuinely intrigued by the Egyptian idea of an afterlife. Out of that fascination emerged a hybrid Greek and Egyptian religion that found its ultimate expression in the cult of Serapis—a Greek gloss on the Egyptian legend of Osiris and Isis.
One of the foundational myths of Egyptian religion, the legend tells how Osiris, murdered by his brother Seth, was chopped into pieces and scattered all over Egypt. With power gained by tricking the sun god, Re, into revealing his secret name, Isis, wife and sister of Osiris, was able to resurrect her brother-husband long enough to conceive a son, Horus, who eventually avenged his father's death by slaughtering uncle Seth.
By Cleopatra's time a cult around the goddess Isis had been spreading across the Mediterranean for hundreds of years. To fortify her position, and like other queens before her, Cleopatra sought to link her identity with the great Isis (and Mark Antony's with Osiris), and to be venerated as a goddess. She had herself depicted in portraits and statues as the universal mother divinity.
Beginning in 37 B.C., Cleopatra began to realize her ambition to enlarge her empire when Antony restored several territories to Egypt and decreed Cleopatra's children their sovereigns. She appeared in the holy dress of Isis at a festival staged in Alexandria to celebrate Antony's victory over Armenia in 34 B.C., just four years before her suicide and the end of the Egyptian empire.
It was Cleopatra's intense identification with Isis, and her royal role as the manifestation of the great goddess of motherhood, fertility, and magic, that ultimately led Kathleen Martinez to Taposiris Magna. Using Strabo's ancient descriptions of Egypt, Martinez sketched a map of candidate burial sites, zeroing in on 21 places associated with the legend of Isis and Osiris and visiting each one she could find.
"What brought me to the conclusion that Taposiris Magna was a possible place for Cleopatra's hidden tomb was the idea that her death was a ritual act of deep religious significance carried out in a very strict, spiritualized ceremony," Martinez says. "Cleopatra negotiated with Octavian to allow her to bury Mark Antony in Egypt. She wanted to be buried with him because she wanted to reenact the legend of Isis and Osiris. The true meaning of the cult of Osiris is that it grants immortality. After their deaths, the gods would allow Cleopatra to live with Antony in another form of existence, so they would have eternal life together."
After studying more than a dozen temples, Martinez headed west of Alexandria along the coastal road to explore the ruin she had begun to believe was the last, best hope for her theory. The temple at Taposiris Magna had been dated to the reign of Ptolemy II, though it may have been even older. The suffix Osiris in its name implied the site was a sacred spot, one of at least 14 throughout Egypt where legend holds that the body of Osiris (or a dismembered part of it) had been buried.
With the Mediterranean on her right and Lake Mareotis on the left, Martinez mused on the possibility that Cleopatra might have traveled a similar route, selecting this strategic location for her burial because it was inside the limits of ancient Alexandria and not yet under the control of the Romans during those last days before her death. "When I saw the place my heart beat very fast," she recalls. As she walked the site, she trailed her hands along the white and beige limestone blocks of the temple's enclosure. This is it! she thought. This is it!
In 1935 British traveler Anthony de Cosson had called Taposiris Magna "the finest ancient monument left to us north of the Pyramids." What was surprising was how little work had been done at the site. In 1905 Evaristo Breccia, the renowned Italian archaeologist, had excavated the foundation of a small fourth-century A.D. Coptic basilica in the otherwise vacant courtyard of the enclosure and discovered an area of Roman baths. In 1998 a Hungarian team led by Győző Vörös found evidence of a colonnaded structure inside the enclosure that they concluded (incorrectly, as it turned out) had been an Isis temple.
It was clear when Vörös's book, Taposiris Magna, was published in 2004 that the temple had had three incarnations—as a Ptolemaic sanctuary, a Roman fort, and a Coptic church. But was that the whole story? Zahi Hawass found himself pondering the possibility that a black granite bust of Isis that Vörös had coaxed from the dirt of Taposiris Magna might well be the face of Cleopatra herself. In October 2005 the dig got under way.
Today it's easy to imagine that the view from the pylon of Taposiris Magna looks much like it did in Cleopatra's day—if you can block out the unsightly band of condominiums and resort hotels between the coastal highway and the broad white sand beach and glimmering blue expanse of the Mediterranean. One hot, sun-washed morning at the temple in May 2010, Kathleen Martinez was bundled in a long-sleeve shirt, head scarf, and fingerless woolen gloves. "For some reason I am always cold when I am here," she said. The two months of excavation she had requested had turned into three months, and three months had become five years.
On the bedrock in the middle of the site an array of column fragments showed the ghostly outlines of what Hawass and Martinez have concluded was not a temple to Isis, but a temple to Osiris. It was oriented on the east-west axis. At an angle just north were the faint hints of an Isis chapel; to the south, an excavated rectangular pit: "That was the sacred lake," Martinez says.
It's a cliché that you can stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere in Egypt and find something amazing from the long-gone past. When Martinez and a team of excavators began probing the ground in 2005, she was focused less on the ultimate prize of Cleopatra's tomb than on simply finding sufficient evidence to sustain her theory that Taposiris Magna might be the place to look. She hoped to demonstrate that the temple was among the most sacred of its day, that it was dedicated to the worship of Osiris and Isis, and that tunnels had been dug underneath the enclosure walls. Within the first year, she was rewarded by the discovery of a shaft and several underground chambers and tunnels. "One of our biggest questions is why did they dig tunnels of this magnitude," she says. "It had to be for a very significant reason."
During the 2006-07 season the Egyptian-Dominican team found three small foundation deposits in the northwest corner of the Osiris temple, just inches from where the Hungarian expedition had stopped digging. The deposits conclusively linked the Osiris temple to the reign of Ptolemy IV, who ruled a century and a half before Cleopatra. In 2007, further supporting the view that the site was very important to the Greeks of ancient Egypt, the excavators found a skeleton of a pregnant woman who had died in childbirth. The tiny bones of the unborn baby lay between the skeleton's hips. Her jaw was distended, suggesting her agony, and her right hand was clutching a small white marble bust of Alexander the Great. "She is a mystery," said Martinez, who had a coffin built for the remains of the mother.
In six years Taposiris Magna has become one of Egypt's most active archaeology sites. More than a thousand objects have been recovered, 200 of them considered significant: pottery, coins, gold jewelry, the broken heads of statues (probably smashed by early Christians). An important discovery was a large cemetery outside the temple walls, suggesting that the subjects of a monarch wished to be buried near royal remains.
Yet the tomb of Cleopatra still hovers out of reach, like a tantalizing mirage, and the theory of who is buried at Taposiris Magna still rests more on educated speculation than on facts. Might not Cleopatra's reign have unraveled too quickly for her to build such a secret tomb? A fantastic story, like a horse with wings, flies in the face of the principle of parsimony. But it's a long hard haul from not-yet-proved to disproved.
Critics of Martinez's theory point out that it is rare in archaeology for someone to announce they are going to find something and then actually find it. "There is no evidence that Cleopatra tried to hide her grave, or would have wanted to," says Duane Roller, a respected Cleopatra scholar. "It would have been hard to hide it from Octavian, the very person who buried her. All the evidence is that she was buried with her ancestors. The material associated with her at Taposiris Magna is not meaningful because material associated with her can be found in many places in Egypt."
"I agree that Octavian knew and authorized the place where she was buried," Martinez says. "But what I believe—and it is only a theory—is that after the mummification process was complete, the priests at Taposiris Magna buried the bodies of Cleopatra and Mark Antony in a different place without the approval of the Romans, a hidden place beneath the courtyard of the temple."
If Cleopatra's tomb is ever found, the archaeological sensation would be rivaled only by Howard Carter's unearthing of the tomb of King Tut in 1922. But will finding her tomb, not to say her body itself, deepen our portrait of the last Egyptian pharaoh? On one hand, how could it not? In the last hundred years about the only new addition to the archaeological record is what scholars believe is a fragment of Cleopatra's handwriting: a scrap of papyrus granting a tax exemption to a Roman citizen in Egypt in 33 B.C.
On the other hand, maybe finding her tomb would diminish what Shakespeare called "her infinite variety." Disembodied, at large in the realm of myth, more context than text, Cleopatra is free to be of different character to different times, which may be the very wellspring of her vitality. No other figure from antiquity seems so versatile in her ambiguities, so modern in her contradictions.
It was lunch hour at the dig site, and the workers had gone to eat in the shade. We were sitting on top of the temple pylon in the radiance of noon, staring out at the sea beyond. There was a feeling of stillness in the air, an inkling of eternity, as if the old Egyptian gods were about—Re, who ruled over the earth, sky, and the underworld, and Isis, who saved Osiris by tricking Re into revealing his secret name.
The search for Cleopatra has come at no small cost to Martinez. She gave up her thriving law practice in Santo Domingo and poured much of her savings into her quest. She moved to an apartment in Alexandria, where she has begun studying Arabic. But it's not an easy life, far from her family and friends. During the revolution earlier this year, she was confronted by a group of aggressive men as she worked at the excavation site. For now, work at the site is on hold. She hopes to return in the fall.
"I believe we are going to find what we are looking for," she says. "The difference is now we're digging in the ground, not in books."
UPDATE: The blog Rogue Classicism responds to this article: "As might be expected, that the NG made this their cover story is big news back in the Dominican where Martinez is from: Cleopatra hunter Martinez makes Nat-Geo’s cover. Sadly, however, there is nothing new in this article and it’s really uncharacteristic that National Geographic has actually given this any attention (feelings mirrored by Martin R. over at Aarvarchaeology) … That said, a few weeks ago while killing time in a bookstore, I was looking at the book which was spawned by the Cleopatra exhibition (which is soon heading to Milwaukee) and read similar sentiments therein. Of course, National Geographic is a sponsor of that exhibition and it strikes me that they are using their otherwise excellent magazine with an incredible history and reputation to hype the exhibition, albeit indirectly. Whatever the case, I am growing increasingly impatient with National Geographic, which seems increasingly to be going the way of its television channel (which is mostly owned by Fox) and choosing sensational over factual."
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Being Cleopatra: Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert being Cleopatra in Cecil B. DeMille's 1934 film, Cleopatra
. The Paramount Pictures film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and won for best cinematography (Victor Milner).
. The Paramount Pictures film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and won for best cinematography (Victor Milner).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
