When I was 16 years old I attended the Faculty of Art's Greek and Roman Department at the University of Alexandria. During my first year I asked Fawzi El-Fakharoni, professor of Greek and Roman archaeology, about the tomb of Cleopatra. Laughing, he asked me why I had not enquired about the tomb of Alexander the Great since he knew of its location. He then speculated that Cleopatra might have been buried inside her palace, now submerged under the Mediterranean Sea. And so, while standing on the shore at Al-Shatbi one day, I stared longingly at the water and imagined Cleopatra and her lover, Mark Antony, resting peacefully under the sea. Back then, I was captivated by Cleopatra, often dreaming of her, and I appreciated her great love story. After I graduated from Alexandria University my career veered towards Egyptology. I pursued my graduate studies and fell in love with new historical figures, such as Hetepheres, Khufu's mother; Hatshepsut; Tiye, the wife of Amenhotep III; and Nefertiti, the love of Akhenaton. Since then I have conducted important works that have shed light on these royal women, and have even identified the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut. I thought that I would never again have the chance to revisit my first love, Cleopatra, until one day Kathleen Martinez from the Dominican Republic presented her theory to me about the location of the lovers' tomb. She believed that Cleopatra and Mark Antony were buried inside the temple at Taposiris Magna, a site located about 50km west of Alexandria. With her soft and confident voice, Martinez convinced me that this site was the perfect place for the lovers to hide and be buried as the gods Isis and Osiris. And so Martinez brought my first love back to me and convinced me to cooperate in a joint excavation. She was very surprised because she never thought for one minute that I would agree. The joint Dominican- Egyptian expedition began its work with Martinez and my assistants at the site. We located a temple dedicated to Isis, and in an area previously excavated we found a head that could belong to Cleopatra as well as 22 coins with her image. We also found several tunnels running below the temple, and a beautiful alabaster head of the queen. Surprisingly, we identified a cemetery just outside the temple area. About 20 tombs had been cut into the rock. Stairs led to a large chamber in which rectangular holes had been carved out for the bodies. Inside these tombs we found about 10 mummies, two of them covered with gold. When I visited the site I was able to determine that this cemetery stretched out about half a kilometre on both the east and west sides of the temple. This could be the single largest cemetery ever found in Egypt. We conducted a radar survey around the temple area. This was led by radar expert Abbas Mohamed Abbas. We have identified three anomalies that might indicate the location of the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony. The discovery of this new cemetery situated just outside the temple area supports the theory of the royal tomb being inside the temple walls. Throughout Pharaonic history, high officials and nobles always preferred to be buried near the tomb of the king, just as at the Giza Pyramids. We plan is to continue working at the site until the end of May in order to investigate the three anomalies identified by the radar survey. We hope to discover the royal tomb within this time. This would be the most important discovery of the 21st century, and would make Martinez go down in history. The last objects that we have found recently include a stone mask with a cleft chin. My assistant asked me if this mask belonged to Mark Antony, and I replied: "No, it belonged to Richard Burton," He, of course, was the actor who played the role of Mark Antony in the Hollywood film and fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor in the persona of Cleopatra.
