“Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt,” opens Saturday at the Franklin Institute and runs through Jan. 2, 2011. The 18,000-square-foot exhibition, which will travel to four other North American cities, includes about 150 artifacts ranging in size from coins to massive statues and weighing a total of 30 tons.

Arts and Exhibitions International organized the 2007 Tutankhamun show that drew more than 1.3 million visitors to the Franklin Institute. AEI chose to debut “Cleopatra” here because of that success and the institute’s science focus: This is not a gallery show but a look at the process that has led to contemporary discoveries and, some believe, to the cusp of one of archaeology’s most sought-after finds, the tomb of Cleopatra and her lover, Mark Antony.

David Silverman is the curator in charge of the Egyptian collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which has paired with the Franklin Institute for this exhibition and is offering a self-guided tour, “Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.” He said despite the tremendous amount that has been written about Cleopatra, little is known of her from material culture.

Mark Lach, designer of the hugely successful Tut exhibition and creative director of “Cleopatra,” calls the current show’s content “far richer.”

Visitors will start with a 4½-minute introductory video. The screen then will rise to reveal a statue of Isis, considered to have been the archetypal mother of Egypt.

That’s where the audio tour, featuring an actress speaking as Cleopatra, begins. It’s free, the first time either Arts and Exhibitions International or the Franklin has included it within the ticket prices, which range from $19.50 to $29.50 for daytime entry.

A glass-floored walkway takes visitors through a room that includes artifacts underfoot, video projections of divers and the sounds of their communication. More than a dozen original videos were produced for the exhibit.

Excerpted from an article by Christopher Yasiejko for The Inquirer

Dr Kathleen Martinez, a young archaeologist from the Dominican Republic, has been excavating a site near Alexandria in the search for the tomb of Cleopatra. After being given permission to conduct a dig at the site for 2 months, Dr Martinez’s team have discovered two chambers which has won them the right to continue the dig into the next season.

Describing the tomb that was discovered at Taposiris Magna, Dr Martinez remains confident that she will uncover the tomb of Cleopatra and Marc Anthony.

Read the full article by Sean Williams at Heritage Key

Kathleen Martinez is a young archaeologist from the Dominican Republic who has toiled for three years on a barren hillside overlooking the coastal highway linking Alexandria with the Libyan border. According to the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, it’s here, at a spot known as Abusir, that the tomb of Marc Antony and Cleopatra might be located.

Her fascination with — and admiration for — Cleopatra is intense. The last queen of Ancient Egypt, she told me, “spoke nine languages, she was a philosopher, she was a poet, she was a politician, she was a goddess, and she was a warrior.”

In short, Martinez believes, Cleopatra was a woman way ahead of her times.

The tale of Antony and Cleopatra has fueled the popular imagination for centuries. Ill-fated lovers were a favorite theme for William Shakespeare, and the Roman noble and the Egyptian queen certainly fit the bill.

Marc Antony was a no less fascinating character than Cleopatra. In his youth, he led a life of heavy drinking and womanizing. According to the Roman historian Plutarch, he accumulated debts of 250 talents, the equivalent of $5 million dollars, before reaching 20. To escape his creditors in Rome, he fled to Greece, where he studied with the philosophers of Athens, before being called to join the Roman legions in the east, then serving under Julius Caesar.

After Caesar’s assassination, Marc Antony became embroiled in a series of power struggles and eventually ended up in Egypt.

Egypt was the enemy of his former ally, Octavian, who would go on to become the Emperor Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Octavian defeated Antony’s forces at the battle of Actium in 30 B.C. Shortly afterward, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide, he by his own sword, she by a poisonous asp.

Octavian, according to Plutarch, allowed them to be buried together “in splendid and regal fashion.” But no one knows where.

There has been plenty of excitement in the past few days over reports that Martinez and her team are about to find the long-lost tomb of Antony and Cleopatra.

Excerpted from an article by Ben Wedeman for CNN

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said today the three sites were discovered last month during a radar survey of the temple of Taposiris Magna.

Work on excavating the temple has been going on for three years.

The temple is located on Lake Mariut which is today called Abusir, near the northern coastal city of Alexandria.

The Associated Press

Continuing on the subject of Cleopatra:

Dr Joann Fletcher will talk about Cleopatra the Great – The Woman Behind the Legend, at a meeting of Scarborough Archaelogical and Historical Society on Monday, April 20.

Dr Fletcher teaches Egyptian archaeology at the University of York and, as part of the university’s mummy research group, has examined human remains from around the world.

She is also Egyptologist for Harrogate Museums and Arts and, as a consultant to the media industry, makes regular television appearances, most recently as lead investigator in the History Channel series Mummy Forensics.

The lecture, which starts at 7.30pm at the Library and Information Centre in Vernon Road, is free with tea and coffee available from 6.30pm.

Scarborough Evening News

The remains of Princess Arsinöe, put to death in 41BC on the orders of Cleopatra and her Roman lover Mark Antony to eliminate her as a rival, are the first relics of the Ptolemaic dynasty to be identified.

The breakthrough, by an Austrian team, has provided pointers to Cleopatra’s true ethnicity. Scholars have long debated whether she was Greek or Macedonian like her ancestor the original Ptolemy, a Macedonian general who was made ruler of Egypt by Alexander the Great, or whether she was north African.

Evidence obtained by studying the dimensions of Arsinöe’s skull shows she had some of the characteristics of white Europeans, ancient Egyptians and black Africans, indicating that Cleopatra was probably of mixed race, too. They were daughters of Ptolemy XII by different wives.

Times Online

Read an alternative viewpoint here: The skeleton of Cleopatra’s sister? Steady on.

Image by mharrsch via Flickr

The world seems to have this pervading fascination with Cleopatra’s beauty, but how did she really look like?

Using images from ancient artefacts including a ring dating from Cleopatra’s reign 2,000 years ago, Cambridge University’s Sally Ann Ashton has pieced together an entirely different image that shows her as a mixed race beauty.

The three-dimensional, computer generated portrait bears little resemblance to the pale-skinned, heavily made-up versions created by Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor in their 1954 and 1961 films.

Ashton developed her image of the monarch – who came to power at the tender age of 18 – by looking at her Greek heritage as well as her Egyptian upbringing.

telegraph.co.uk

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• The Real Face of Cleopatra

A new biography of the Macedonian ruler attempts to debunk many myths surrounding her legacy. Egyptologist Tyldesley (Egypt: How a Lost Civilization Was Rediscovered, 2006, etc.) digs deeply into Cleopatra’s life, piecing together a unique portrait of her successes and failures.

Many biographers focus too much on Cleopatra’s reputation as a temptress, but Tyldesley gamely analyzes her politically astute nature at work against the backdrop of the bloody, brutal times in which she operated. In chronological fashion, the author covers the major historical issues surrounding Cleopatra, but she wisely avoids lingering too long on well-traveled ground. Tyldesley examines many of the burning questions that continue to puzzle historians – Was she black? Did she marry her brother? Was she beautiful or ugly? – and that have helped create such a beguiling picture of the queen.