Cleopatra and the Temple of Tomb

It seems like people have been pretty busy lately worrying about Cleopatra, her death and now the aftermath.

A flamboyant archeologist known worldwide for his trademark Indiana Jones hat believes he has identified the site where Cleopatra is buried. Now, with a team of 12 archeologists and 70 excavators, Zahi Hawass, 60, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has started searching for the entrance to her tomb.

And after a breakthrough two weeks ago he hopes to find her lover, the Roman general Mark Antony, sharing her last resting place at the site of a temple, the Taposiris Magna, 28 miles west of Alexandria. Hawass has discovered a 400ft tunnel beneath the temple containing clues that the supposedly beautiful queen may lie beneath. “We’ve found tunnels with statues of Cleopatra and many coins bearing her face, things you wouldn’t expect in a typical temple,” he said.

It sounds to us like the makings for yet another blockbuster sequel.

[Times Online]

Cleopatra and the Scary Snake Mystery

Being that it's April Fools' Day, it seems only fitting to debunk some myths about the way some famous people died. Mama Cass by way of a sandwich? Hardly. How about Cleopatra? That thing about the snake...is it true?

Popular lore holds that in Cleopatra's last moments, the distraught queen -- who had just lost her kingdom and learned of her lover's demise -- smuggled a poisonous snake into her locked chamber and died, along with two ladies-in-waiting, of a self-inflicted snake bite.

Such a scenario is next to impossible, according to Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley, who shatters the "snakebite suicide" myth in her new book, Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt, just published in Europe and slated for an upcoming U.S. release. "It seems to me that the snake theory is just too difficult to sustain, as it leaves too many loopholes," Tyldesley said.

Tyldesley acknowledges that portion sof the story are likely to be true, but there are other ways that Cleopatra could have committed suicide if that was her intention. The myth probably got started because Cleopatra died without a prior illness.

So how did Cleopatra really die? There are other theories. Some say it was self-administered poison; others believe that she was murdered by Octavian.

Popular legend also states that in 31 BC when she saw that Mark Antony's poorly equipped and manned ships were losing to the Romans' superior vessels, Cleopatra took flight and that Antony followed her. We can't help but wonder if this flight led to this contemporary retelling of the historic event

[Phoenix New Times]
[Discovery News]