04x20 - The Hunt for Cleopatra's Missing Tomb

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Tonight,

a 2,000-year-old mystery

that's confounded

top archaeologists.

The world's most famous queen

lost without a trace.

Cleopatra is

a giant in Egyptian history,

renowned for her cunning

across a 21-year rule.

But no one knows

what happens to her

after she dies

or where she's buried.

This kicks off

an incredible mystery

that lasts to this day.

Now we reveal the top theories

surrounding

the final resting place

of Egypt's last pharaoh.

The last place we know

where Cleopatra was

when she was alive

was her palace.

If we can find Mark Antony,

we could potentially

find Cleopatra.

Octavian has her k*lled

and either he dumped her body,

or he left her

where she lay in her mausoleum.

Can new evidence finally uncover

Cleopatra's missing tomb?

November, 2022.

In the ancient Egyptian city

of Taposiris Magna,

Kathleen Martínez has

been excavating

a ruined temple

for the past 17 years.

Martínez is actually

a really formidable woman,

and she's a lawyer by training.

She's not an archaeologist

of any kind,

but she has this passion.

And so, in 2002,

using her own funds,

she decides to take herself

out to Egypt

to explore what's there

in Taposiris Magna.

She collaborates with Egypt's

most famous archaeologist,

Dr. Zahi Hawass,

because Kathleen

believes that

at the site of Taposiris Magna

is the lost tomb

of the famous

Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

It could be a major new lead

in a cold case that goes back

thousands of years.

Cleopatra is one

of the most powerful women

ever to come out of

the ancient Mediterranean world.

She ruled Egypt for 21 years,

from 51 to 30 B.C.

When Cleopatra is 18 years old,

her father,

King Ptolemy XII Auletes, dies.

And Cleopatra then

sort of ascends to the throne.

But because she's a woman,

she can't do it alone.

So her brother is made

co-regent.

The thing

about her brother, however,

is that he's only ten years old.

Before long, a rivalry ensues,

and those aligned

with Cleopatra's younger brother

seek to dethrone her.

But Cleopatra devises

a clever way to stay in power.

She allies herself with Rome.

Cleopatra has two significant

relationships in her life,

both of which are

strategic partnerships

to keep her on the throne.

One is a partnership

with the great Julius Caesar.

He helps her shore up her power,

and with him, she supposedly has

a son named Caesarion.

The second?

Caesar's top general,

Mark Antony.

In 43 B.C.,

he becomes part

of a new Roman

power structure created

after Caesar's assassination.

Rome comes to be ruled

by what's called a triumvirate.

This is actually

a group of three men:

Mark Antony, Marcus Lepidis,

and Octavian.

Wisely, she begins

a strategic relationship

with Mark Antony,

who promises

to support her rule.

Their romance becomes

the stuff of movie lore.

Eventually, Mark Antony is

so smitten with Cleopatra

that he leaves his wife,

moves to Alexandria,

and stays with Cleopatra.

Unfortunately for Cleopatra,

this ends up having

the opposite effect

of what she intended,

because, instead of really

getting the support of Rome,

she's got Mark Antony

earning the enmity

of everybody back in Rome

for leaving his wife, Octavia,

who was actually

Octavian's sister.

So Octavian is furious

and declares w*r against

Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

After nearly

three years of fighting,

in 31 B.C.,

Octavian's forces

defeat Antony

and Cleopatra's armies

and march on Alexandria.

As the fighting

grows ever closer,

Cleopatra retreats

into a mausoleum in her palace.

The rest is the stuff

of Shakespearean lore.

Mark Antony,

who's out fighting on the front,

gets a message from

one of Cleopatra's servants.

When he opens it,

he's horrified to find out

that Cleopatra is dead,

that she's k*lled herself.

Upon hearing the news,

Mark Antony attempts

to k*ll himself

by falling on his own sword,

but he fails to take his life.

Instead,

a mortally wounded Antony

is brought

to Cleopatra's chambers.

It turns out she hasn't

k*lled herself at all.

At this time, Antony had become

more of a liability

than an asset to Cleopatra.

He had no more power in Rome.

She actually

asked one of her servants

to go to Mark Antony

and give this message

to try to scare him

into surrendering

in the hopes that

maybe that would help

keep him alive.

Tragically, Antony dies

shortly after this.

Cleopatra leaves her tomb,

goes back to the palace,

meets with Octavian

with negotiations

about her future.

Cleopatra's aspirations

is for Caesarion, her son,

to become the king

or the ruler of Egypt.

Rome doesn't have kings,

but at least he could

be the legitimate heir

of Julius Caesar

and the ruler of Rome as well.

Octavian says he will

spare her and her children,

but he will never

allow the succession.

Cleopatra takes herself

back to her palace,

to her mausoleum,

considers this deal,

and ultimately decides

that she has

nothing left to live for,

and she takes her own life.

Octavian goes on to become

Rome's first emperor,

and Cleopatra will die

as the last active ruler

of the kingdom of Egypt.

Early historians tell us

the method

of Cleopatra's death is poison.

But in those histories,

her story ends there.

This was a time of civil w*r.

This is a time

of occupation of Egypt,

and a lot of stuff has

been lost over time.

This kicks off

an incredible mystery

that lasts to this day.

No one knows what happens to her

after she dies

or where she's buried.

With such limited information,

where should the search

for Cleopatra's remains begin?

Cleopatra has a mausoleum

and tomb under construction

in her palace when she dies.

So it makes sense

that the tomb should be

the first place that we look.

The challenge is,

the tomb is missing.

But in 1996,

a French archaeologist makes

a breakthrough.

Frank Goddio is

one of the fathers

of underwater archaeology.

He primarily focuses on finding

ancient shipwrecks

and also sunken cities.

Goddio comes up with a theory

as to the location

of Cleopatra's palace.

He believes

that it lies due east

of the modern city

of Alexandria.

And the reason

why we haven't found it

is because it's underwater.

According to Goddio's research,

the landscape of this region

has changed dramatically

since Cleopatra's time.

Frank Goddio reads

the ancient sources,

and he learns from them

that, in 365 A.D

so, about 400 years

after Cleopatra

there was a massive earthquake

that hit Alexandria,

followed by a tsunami that did

a tremendous amount of damage.

Most of the ancient city

at that point was destroyed.

This tidal wave is so massive

that it flings ships over houses

and kills over 50,000 people.

And Goddio thinks that might be

what ultimately

covers Alexandria

and hides Cleopatra's palace.

To prove this,

Goddio begins his search

in the waters

of modern-day Alexandria's

eastern seaport.

Goddio and his team start

by doing high tech scans,

ultimately wanting to create

a master map

of the seafloor surface.

They start to see

the outlines of columns,

porticos, buildings,

even statues.

The team is able to compare

the written sources

with the archaeological mapping,

and they start to see

correlations.

So, they know from this

that they're on the right track.

It takes years to complete

the first initial map.

They are doing this underwater,

and it is so much more difficult

than doing archaeology

on the land.

But once they have

this master map,

things start to go much quicker.

In 1998, Goddio strikes paydirt.

He finds the sunken remains

of Cleopatra's palace.

The palace has been

missing for 2,000 years.

This makes

big international headlines.

The thing is, the palace is

entirely covered

and filled with mud.

It is very difficult

to excavate and explore.

They're confident

that Cleopatra is there,

but finding her is going

to be extremely difficult.

After nearly

a decade of searching,

Goddio finds

no trace of the tomb.

In 2008,

Goddio discovers something new.

It's an enormous structure,

as large as a football field.

Goddio has radiocarbon dates

that he's taken from

organic pieces of the structure.

And these dates show

that it could have been built

during the time of Cleopatra.

Though the team remains hopeful,

they have not yet

discovered the tomb.

To this day,

Goddio and his team are

still searching, but they have

barely scratched the surface

of this enormous complex.

When Cleopatra's

palace is found underwater

by archaeologist Frank Goddio,

he believes her tomb should be

somewhere inside.

The last place

we know Cleopatra was

when she was alive

is her palace,

and that was

just discovered underwater

in 1998.

However,

not everyone's convinced

Goddio will find the tomb.

First of all,

underwater exploration

is incredibly difficult.

Secondly,

we believe her tomb was

unfinished when she d*ed.

So the artifacts, relics,

statues, and other signs

that would lead us there,

they weren't put in place yet.

But there might be another way

to find Cleopatra's tomb.

Even though he dies a traitor,

many Romans are interested

in what becomes of Mark Antony.

He was at one point

a national hero,

and so there's a chance

he'd be easier to track down.

And if we can find Mark Antony,

we could potentially

find Cleopatra.

Within a few years

of Mark Antony's death,

several ancient historians

share more details.

The Roman custom at the time is

to cremate great leaders.

Mark Antony is cremated,

Julius Caesar is cremated,

and, after his death,

Octavian will be cremated.

A few decades afterward,

the Greek historian Plutarch

fills in even more details.

Plutarch writes that,

after Mark Antony's death,

Octavian has Cleopatra

as his prisoner.

But he does allow her,

out of clemency,

to go and visit

Mark Antony's tomb.

And when she's there,

she holds the urn

that has his ashes in it,

and she pours out a libation,

as a kind of

act of love and piety.

So apparently Mark Antony

has been given a tomb

for his ashes.

According to Plutarch,

after Cleopatra commits su1c1de,

Octavian is similarly

generous with her remains

and allows her to be buried

with Mark Antony.

Mark Antony's

final resting place

hasn't been found either,

so there's a chance

that he and the missing

Cleopatra are

out there together somewhere.

Plutarch is

actually the only source

that we have that says

that Cleopatra, after her death,

was placed together with Antony.

We do have other ancient sources

which talk about

Octavian's clemency,

his mercy and compassion

towards his enemies.

Despite all the stories

of Octavian's kindness,

many historians

believe he didn't treat

Cleopatra's body

with respect at all.

There's a saying that history is

written by the victors.

That means that authors

in Octavian's time are

generally going to write

great things about him.

Otherwise they might suffer

punishment if they upset him.

As for the accounts

of Plutarch, they were

probably just

embellished over time.

Octavian himself also

doctors the historical record.

He comes up

with a smear campaign

against Cleopatra, labeling her

an evil seductress and traitor,

someone who used

their feminine wiles

to brainwash Mark Antony.

To me, this suggests

that he wouldn't have

given Cleopatra a royal burial

beside Mark Antony.

Octavian's actions

after Cleopatra's death

also speak volumes.

One of the last acts

that Cleopatra does

before she dies is

she sends her son Caesarion away

away in order to protect him,

but after her death,

Octavian sends people

to go and find him

and have him k*lled.

He actually does this

by tricking Caesarion

once he's been found.

So he tells Caesarion that,

if he returns to Alexandria,

he'll be made king of Egypt.

But as soon as Caesarion

returns home, he's k*lled.

The most commonly-told

account says

that one of

Octavian's bodyguards

strangles him to death.

Keep in mind,

this is by the same historians

who say that

Octavian was generous

with Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

This is the cleaned-up

version of the story.

Octavian's actions don't stop

with Caesarion's m*rder.

Antony's oldest son

Antyllus is ex*cuted

and Antony's children

with Cleopatra

he has three of them

are actually captured,

and they're taken back to Rome,

where they're paraded in chains

as part of Octavian's

m*llitary triumph.

All of this shows

considerable hatred

and contempt

for Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

To the new emperor,

Antony is the man

who left the Triumvirate,

who left his wife,

Octavian's sister,

for another woman,

who left Rome

to go and flee to Egypt.

Cleopatra was the foul temptress

who made it all happen.

I think the prevailing opinion

among today's scholars

is that if you're going to go

digging around Alexandria,

trying to find

a carefully-preserved urn

of Cleopatra's ashes

beside those of Mark Antony,

you're probably

wasting your time.

Once Cleopatra was

of no further value as a trophy,

Octavian probably didn't care

about her or Antony.

For more than 2,000 years,

the story of Cleopatra's

dramatic su1c1de

remains mostly unchallenged.

The most famous version

of this su1c1de

comes from Virgil

in "The Aeneid,"

where he suggests that Cleopatra

gets a snake to bite her,

and that's how she dies.

The story then gets

elaborated on

over the years,

where some authors suggesting

that the snake is

actually an asp.

Plutarch also

supports this idea.

And what he says is

that Cleopatra has the asp

smuggled into the palace

in a basket,

and it was covered over

with figs and leaves

so that nobody could

see it coming in.

Today, many historians

doubt the snake bite story.

The reason people have

a problem with it

is that, at this point,

Cleopatra is Octavian's prisoner

and under close guard.

Asps are large.

They wriggle and hiss.

So for someone to have

brought in a tray of food

with a snake and for it

to have gone unnoticed,

well, those would have been

the worst guards in history.

Cleopatra is also no fool.

She knows her science

and her medicine,

and she is smart enough

to figure out

all the things

that could go wrong

with this particular plan.

She wouldn't have chosen

a plan with so many variables.

Those who believe

the su1c1de story think

it's much more likely

Cleopatra simply had

a bottle of poison with her

from the moment

the Romans arrived at her gates.

In 2013, bestselling author

and criminal profiler Pat Brown

upends the su1c1de theory.

Brown looks at Cleopatra's death

like she would

any other cold case,

as she's been trained to do

throughout her career.

Pat Brown looks at the evidence,

the wounds,

the placement of the body,

and she wonders

if some of the evidence

was staged

or just completely fabricated.

Brown's conclusion?

Cleopatra's death isn't su1c1de.

It's cold-blooded m*rder.

Brown starts by taking

the su1c1de theory

at face value.

She consults

with medical examiners,

with herpetologists,

to understand

all of the in's and out's

of snake poison.

According

to the historical accounts,

Cleopatra's two maidservants

also die from poisoning

shortly after she does.

So how exactly does

one snake k*ll three people?

Is it trained

to bite on command?

Does it even have enough venom

to k*ll three women?

The most likely poisonous snakes

that were around

during this time in Egypt

were the cobra and the asp.

Although both snakes have

enough venom in them

to k*ll multiple people,

most of the venom is

actually discharged

in their very first bite.

And after that,

it takes a little while

for them to sort of

recharge and reload.

Fully replenishing their venom

can take a snake days.

They don't need

a full t*nk to k*ll someone,

but it would need to be

at least an hour

before someone else

could be k*lled.

There's another

timing issue as well.

The amount of time it takes

for the snake bite

to k*ll someone.

Brown points out

that in the hours

before Cleopatra's death,

she's exchanging messages

with Octavian.

Guards and messengers are

going in and out,

and dying from a snake bite

takes hours, and it's agonizing.

So, we're saying that

nobody noticed

this agonizing death

over several hours?

According to Brown,

the outcome would be the same

even if poison was

smuggled in via a bottle.

Once again,

you're left with the same issue.

In fact,

it would take slightly longer

for the venom to take effect

because it has to get

absorbed into

the bloodstream first.

Once Brown rules out su1c1de,

she turns her attention

to m*rder.

As Brown and any good

criminal profiler knows,

m*rder requires motive.

And who had the most to gain

from Cleopatra's death?

Octavian.

Some people

believe that Octavian

would want to keep

Cleopatra alive

to display her

as a conquered trophy

through the streets of Rome.

He displays the children

of Cleopatra and Mark Antony

exactly in this way.

But according to Brown,

Octavian has a stronger motive

to k*ll Cleopatra

than to keep her alive.

If Cleopatra is still alive,

then Octavian would

have somebody

who could stand in the way

of his control over Egypt.

Cleopatra is the rightful queen.

Octavian already has

several non-threatening trophies

to parade around

her younger children.

They're too young

to raise an army

or seize the throne.

One year

after Brown's book, in 2014,

two Greek historians

write an article

that reaches

the same conclusion.

Gregory Tsoucalas

and Markos Sgantzos publish

"The Death of Cleopatra:

su1c1de by Snakebite

or Poisoned by Her Enemies?"

In it, they propose

that Egypt's last queen

was, in fact,

m*rder*d by Octavian.

Tsoucalas and Sgantzos say

that all the circumstances

point to Cleopatra

being k*lled by a Roman poison,

and that means m*rder.

Like all m*llitary leaders

of the time,

Octavian actually travels

with physicians,

and physicians are

trained in poisons.

The Romans specialize

in a poison that's a mixture

of hemlock, opium, and aconite.

This poison

induces a deep sleep,

resulting in coma, then death.

According to Tsoucalas

and Sgantzos,

Octavian has Cleopatra

and her servants injected

with this Roman poison,

possibly even using a needle

that makes it look like

they've been bitten by a snake.

Then what happened

to Cleopatra's body?

If this is the case,

there is no tomb.

Octavian is just kind

of trying to move on

from the whole

Cleopatra situation.

So, according to their theory,

he has her k*lled

and plants the story

of su1c1de in order to be able

to kind of tell a nice story

and then move on

as quickly as possible.

If he's smart enough to do that,

then he's smart enough

to not build her a tomb.

The last thing he needs is

a permanent marker

of a once-beloved queen

for people to pilgrimage to

and make offerings to.

So, unfortunately,

if you subscribe to this theory,

the search for Cleopatra's

lost tomb is pointless.

Because Octavian

covered his tracks.

Egypt's last pharaoh

never gets a tomb.

Her body was destroyed,

dumped, and forgotten.

For thousands of years,

Cleopatra's story has been

entwined with her relationship

with Rome's most powerful men.

But in 2010,

an American archaeologist

finds evidence

that upends that notion

and offers a new theory

about her final days.

In 2010, Ohio State University

Professor Duane Roller

publishes

"Cleopatra: A Biography."

The real Cleopatra is

notoriously difficult to grasp.

Roller's book is one

of the best-researched accounts

of Cleopatra around.

In addition to being

an archaeologist,

Roller is a classicist.

He can read

all of the original accounts

in their original Greek

and Latin.

Based on an exhaustive search

through the historical record,

he believes that

a great deal about Cleopatra

has been misunderstood,

and perhaps this can explain

what happens to her

after she dies.

First of all,

Roller is convinced that

Cleopatra is not subservient

to her Roman lovers

or even to Rome at all.

According to Roller,

she carefully manipulates them

to keep her kingdom intact.

When Cleopatra

came to the throne,

she had three surviving siblings

who did not get along.

There's all kind of

sibling rivalry.

Cleopatra's Egypt is probably

about to be split in three parts

until she convinces

Julius Caesar to help.

She does this

in a rather ingenious way.

Roman sources tell us

that she has herself

wrapped in a carpet and smuggled

into Caesar's quarters.

When he unrolls

this mysterious gift,

there she is

in all her regal finery,

ready to negotiate a deal

to save Egypt.

After Caesar's death,

Cleopatra carefully researches

his successors.

When Antony comes to the east,

she very quickly realizes

he is a person to be cultivated.

She learns that

Mark Antony believes himself

to be the embodiment

of the Greek god Dionysus.

And so she hatches

a clever plan to earn his favor.

Dionysus is

the god of wine and pleasure,

a fact Cleopatra uses

to her advantage

when she first meets

Antony in 41 B.C.

Knowing his Dionysus fetish,

she arrives dressed up

as the Greek goddess Aphrodite,

being fanned by attendants

dressed as Cupids.

Almost immediately,

Antony is willing to do

just about anything

Cleopatra asks of him.

While these stories show cunning

on Cleopatra's part,

they suggest that her main tool

for manipulation was sex.

But Roller believes

that that was not the case.

Instead,

Roller believes Cleopatra uses

her negotiation skills

to survive.

Despite being a smaller kingdom

with a less powerful m*llitary,

Egypt had a lot more money

than Rome.

Cleopatra, as it turns out,

was phenomenally wealthy.

I believe it's her wealth

and not her sexual prowess

that ultimately dictates

how Cleopatra lived

and how she d*ed.

Roller examines the work

of the Roman historian

Cassius Dio.

In it, he discovers that

Mark Antony initially

comes to Cleopatra

because he needs

her financial support

to pay off

Rome's armies and debts.

According to Dio,

Cleopatra and Antony had

a financial relationship,

and who knows whether

it was all that he needed?

But it certainly helped

to sustain him financially,

especially as sources

began to dry up in Rome.

When Octavian

defeats Antony in 30 B.C.,

he intends to seize

Cleopatra's treasure.

But she has other plans.

Roller finds evidence that,

in those final days,

Cleopatra takes action.

She isn't about to let

Octavian get the upper hand.

She still has

one final play to make.

Cleopatra has her servants

gather up her wealth,

everything they can grab,

and she has them amass it

in the safest place she knows:

her own mausoleum.

The rest she orders hidden.

When Octavian's forces

arrive inside,

she dramatically

holds up a torch

and threatens to k*ll herself

and take

all the treasure with her.

If this is true,

this is an ingenious move.

Cleopatra knows the only thing

Octavian needs from her

is her money,

and she can use that

as a bargaining tool.

According to Roller's research,

Cleopatra begins

an extended negotiation

with Octavian.

She offers to support him

and give over her treasure,

if he agrees

to meet certain conditions.

Here, she is

holding her wealth hostage

and giving herself time

to make other plans.

Among those plans,

she finds a way

to smuggle her son out of town.

Next, she has

to make plans for herself.

Roller cites the account

of the Roman historian

Titus Livius.

In one of Cleopatra's

final exchanges

with Octavian, she writes,

"I will not be led

in triumph."

This is one of

the few times any historian

bothers to write

her specific words down,

and it gives us a clue

as to what she intended next.

Roller writes

that Cleopatra then

orchestrates her own death

by poisoning,

which takes place

in August of 30 B.C.

If she's planned this out

down to the last detail,

many historians believe

that she made

one final arrangement.

And that explains why her tomb

has yet to be found.

Upon her death,

Cleopatra orders her body

smuggled out of the palace

and buried in an unmarked grave.

This way, her enemies will

never find her.

Is it possible she pulled

this off to have her body

smuggled out of a palace

swarming with Roman soldiers?

I think the answer is yes.

Cleopatra had so much wealth,

she could have bribed

every Roman in the palace.

This is how she could have

made arrangements

for her secret burial.

If Cleopatra was

successful, where is her tomb?

So if this is the case,

and Cleopatra made

her own funeral arrangements,

that means that we would

have to stop looking

for any kind of evidence

of a Roman-style burial

in ash urns

and start thinking

like an Egyptian.

This would mean

Cleopatra didn't end up

in Alexandria at all.

Now, we have a whole new world

of possibilities to explore.

In 2002, Dominican attorney

Kathleen Martínez

sets out to find

Cleopatra's lost tomb.

Ever since

she was a young child,

Martínez has been

fascinated with Egypt.

Her family encouraged

the law career.

But eventually,

she gives it all up

to become

an archaeologist in Egypt.

The one mystery

that she wants to solve

beyond anything else is

the mystery of Cleopatra's tomb.

Like many modern day historians,

she respects

and admires Cleopatra

as a brilliant queen.

And she can't imagine

that a queen would have

allowed herself to be

desecrated after death.

Martínez believes

that Cleopatra is way too smart

not to have seen

her own death coming.

She knows that

Octavian is either

going to have her ex*cuted

or use her as a puppet

by parading her around.

So she plans for her death

and has her handmaidens

smuggle her body

out of Alexandria.

But where do you look?

Martínez believes

that she has the answer.

Like many pharaohs,

Cleopatra shapes her image

around one of the Egyptian gods.

During her reign,

Cleopatra considers herself

a living representation of !sis,

a goddess of fertility

and motherhood

and wife to the god-king Osiris.

If Cleopatra was able to choose

her own resting place,

Martínez is confident

it would have been

a temple of !sis or Osiris.

The problem is,

there are a lot of temples

dedicated

to both !sis and Osiris.

To locate the right one,

Dr. Martínez relies

on Greek geographer

Strabo's descriptions

of ancient Egypt.

Based on Strabo's writing,

Martínez locates 21 temples

associated with Osiris and !sis.

She looks at these 21 locations

and realizes

that almost all of them

have already been

thoroughly explored.

All except one:

the temple

at the ancient ruins

of Taposiris Magna.

Looking at the scant

historical records,

Martínez believes it's only

been lightly surveyed,

and it's only 30 miles

from Alexandria.

This must be the place.

Martínez gets

in touch with Egypt's

chief archaeologist,

a man called Zahi Hawass,

who agrees to show her

around Taposiris Magna.

From the moment she arrives,

she feels certain that the great

Queen Cleopatra is here.

In order to excavate the site,

Dr. Martínez needs permission

from the Egyptian government.

Initially, the Egyptians

kind of make fun of her.

They blow her off

because, after all,

what would a lawyer by trade

know about

ancient Egyptian archaeology?

But Martínez persists,

and she agrees to fund

the venture entirely on her own.

Finally, they do

grant her a license,

the first ever given

to a Latin American expedition.

There's just one catch:

the license is only good

for eight weeks.

Anyone who knows anything

about archaeological digs

knows that this is

an impossible challenge.

Excavations are

a slow and tedious process.

It can take eight months

to find a single artifact,

and once you find it,

it can take a long time

to excavate it safely.

So an eight week deadline

to excavate an entire site

really limits

what you're able to do.

Undeterred,

Martínez and her team

start digging

at Taposiris Magna in 2004.

The clock is ticking down.

For seven whole weeks,

Martínez finds

absolutely nothing.

And then, almost like

something out of a movie,

on the last day of the dig,

Martínez discovers

what looks to be

a hidden shaft

by the north gate of the temple.

Inside the shaft,

she discovers

two secret chambers.

And in those chambers, Martínez

finds something important.

These are small gray tablets

with Greek inscriptions.

The tablets Martínez finds are

called foundation deposits.

During constructions

of the time,

tablets like that were

left behind to give information

on the construction

of the building.

When Martínez cleans the tablets

and reads the Greek,

she learns that

the Taposiris Magna complex

was built by Ptolemy IV,

Cleopatra's great-great-

great grandfather.

Initially,

people thought Martínez's theory

was far-fetched.

They believed that

no one was digging

at Taposiris Magna

because there was

nothing to find.

Now, Martínez has

found something.

The Egyptian

government allows Martínez

to extend the dig.

Energized by their find,

the team brings in

new technology.

In 2008, Martínez and her team

bring in

ground-penetrating radar.

And they're quickly able

to ascertain

that there are

a whole series of tunnels

underneath Taposiris Magna,

about 68 feet

beneath the surface.

And just below these corridors,

they find something that

just makes their jaws drop.

In 2008,

archaeologist Kathleen Martínez

and her team are

exploring the ruins

of the Egyptian temple

of Taposiris Magna.

They're looking

for Cleopatra's tomb.

As they sweep the area

with ground-penetrating radar,

they suddenly see

what appears to be

a network

of underground corridors.

And these corridors lead

to multiple chambers.

Martínez believes that

these are burial chambers.

Martínez is not about

to miss this discovery.

She's going in herself.

She has her team lower her down

into the tunnels themselves.

From there, she enters

into one of the chambers,

and she finds

the head of a statue.

And can you believe it?

It's Cleopatra.

She also finds a mask

that resembles Mark Antony.

It's extraordinary to think

that other archaeological teams

have explored this site

and declared that

there was nothing to find,

when all these wonderful

artifacts have been discovered.

Next, Martínez and her team

uncover hundreds

of bronze coins.

These coins bear

the image of Cleopatra,

so obviously they're

from the time of Cleopatra.

They also suggest that

this is a place of pilgrimage

for Egyptians

who left those coins.

With each of these discoveries,

the team becomes

increasingly convinced

that they're going to find

the tomb of Cleopatra.

But just as Martínez

believes she's on the verge

of a major breakthrough,

unrest in North Africa

brings her progress to a halt.

Democracy, democracy,

let us live in liberty.

It's complete chaos

in the Arab world.

You have Libya's leader,

Muammar Gaddafi,

who is deposed

and also m*rder*d.

And then, in 2011,

Egyptian president

Hosni Mubarak is overthrown.

With all of Egypt in turmoil,

Dr. Martínez has no choice

but to suspend her dig.

This is a worst case

scenario for Martínez,

because once

an expedition is suspended,

there is no guarantee that

it will ever start up again.

Fortunately, in 2014,

stability returns.

The project is able

to start again,

and they discover new artifacts,

more links to Cleopatra herself,

but no tomb.

Martínez doesn't give up.

In 2021, she finds

16 more burial chambers

with many skeletons and mummies.

Two of these mummies are

incredibly special,

because they appear

to be royalty and buried

side by side, like lovers.

One of them is adorned

with a crown

that's decorated with horns.

The other has gilded decorations

that look like a wide necklace.

Most importantly,

the two mummies have

golden tongues nestled

in their jawbones.

Golden tongues are

a very important part

of ancient Egyptian culture.

In the Book of the Dead,

gold tongues ensure

that the deceased will

be able to speak,

eat and drink in the afterlife.

A crown, golden tongues,

gilded decorations.

This was obviously the tomb

of no ordinary couple.

Could these possibly be

the mummified bodies

of Antony and Cleopatra?

The mummies are

eventually X-rayed,

and while it is found

that they are male and female,

no further identification

can be made.

Martínez concludes that,

while the mummies

are promising,

if this really was

the tomb of Cleopatra,

it would probably be

much grander but who knows?

If Cleopatra and Antony had

to be smuggled out

at the last minute, maybe

the tomb wouldn't be so grand.

A year later,

Dr. Martínez's team makes

an even more exciting discovery.

Recently,

in 2022, Martínez's team

found a long tunnel,

60 feet underground.

The tunnel is attached

to a newly-found temple of !sis

that's part of the complex.

This is where

Martínez believes that

Cleopatra and possibly Antony

are both buried.

If Cleopatra does

in fact have a tomb,

I think Martínez really is

looking in the right direction.

And what she has produced so far

only strengthens her theory

that she is looking

in the right place.

I think that

this is a possibility,

although there are a lot

of possibilities out there.

No matter what,

the investigations

at Taposiris Magna

will give us more information

than we had before.

And it looks like it'll give us

more information

on the time of Cleopatra

and hopefully Cleopatra herself.

In the hunt for Cleopatra,

Kathleen Martínez may have

her work cut out for her.

The new section she's exploring

at Taposiris Magna

is mostly underwater.

Undeterred, Martínez calls

this phase of her dig, quote,

the beginning of a new journey.

Only time will tell

if she's on the right track.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."