Monument lifted from Cleopatra's underwater city

Monument lifted from Cleopatra's underwater city

By KATARINA KRATOVAC,
Associated Press Writer
17 Dec 2009

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt – Archaeologists on Thursday hoisted a 9-ton temple pylon from the waters of the Mediterranean that was part of the palace complex of the fabled Cleopatra before it became submerged for centuries in the harbor of Alexandria.

The pylon, which once stood at the entrance to a temple of Isis, is to be the centerpiece of an ambitious underwater museum planned by Egypt to showcase the sunken city, believed to have been toppled into the sea by earthquakes in the 4th century.

Divers and underwater archaeologists used a giant crane and ropes to lift the 9-ton, 7.4-foot-tall pylon, covered with muck and seaweed, out of the murky waters. It was deposited ashore as Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, and other officials watched.

The pylon was part of a sprawling palace from which the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt and where 1st Century B.C. Queen Cleopatra wooed the Roman general Marc Antony before they both committed suicide after their defeat by Augustus Caesar.

The temple dedicated to Isis, a pharaonic goddess of fertility and magic, is at least 2,050 years old, but archaeologists believe it's likely much older. The pylon was cut from a single slab of red granite quarried in Aswan, some 700 miles (more than 1,100 kilometers) to the south, officials said.

"The cult of Isis was so powerful, it's no wonder Cleopatra chose to make her living quarters next to the temple," said coastal geoarchaeologist Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Egyptian authorities hope that eventually the pylon will become a part of the underwater museum, an ambitious attempt to draw tourists to the country's northern coast, often overshadowed by the grand pharaonic temples of Luxor in the south, the Giza pyramids outside Cairo and the beaches of the Red Sea.

They are hoping the allure of Alexandria, founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great, can also be a draw.

Cleopatra's palace and other buildings and monuments now lie strewn on the seabed in the harbor of Alexandria, the second largest city of Egypt. Since 1994, archaeologists have been exploring the ruins, one of the richest underwater excavations in the Mediterranean, with some 6,000 artifacts. Another 20,000 objects are scattered off other parts of Alexandria's coast, said Ibrahim Darwish, head of the city's underwater archaeology department.

In recent years, excavators have discovered dozens of sphinxes in the harbor, along with pieces of what is believed to be the Alexandria Lighthouse, or Pharos, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The pylon is the first major artifact extracted from the harbor since 2002, when authorities banned further removal of major artifacts from the sea for fear it would damage them.

"The tower is unique among Alexandria's antiquities. We believe it was part of the complex surrounding Cleopatra's palace," Hawass said, as the crane gently placed the pylon on the harbor bank. "This is an important part of Alexandria's history and it brings us closer to knowing more about the ancient city."

Hawass has already launched another high-profile dig connected to Cleopatra. In April, he said he hopes to find the long-lost tomb of Antony and Cleopatra — and that he believes it may be inside a temple of Osiris located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Alexandria.

The pylon extracted Thursday was discovered by a Greek expedition in 1998. Retrieving it was a laborious process: For weeks, divers cleaned it of mud and scum, then they dragged it across the sea floor for three days to bring it closer to the harbor's edge for Thursday's extraction.

A truck stood by to ferry the pylon to a freshwater tank, where it will lie for six months until all the salt, which acts as a preservative underwater but damages it once exposed, is dissolved.

Still in its planning stages, the underwater museum would allow visitors to walk through underwater tunnels for close-up views of sunken artifacts, and it may even include a submarine on rails.

A collaboration between Egypt and UNESCO, the museum would cost at least $140 million, said Darwish. The above-water section would feature sail-shaped structures that would complement the architecture of the harbor and have the city's corniche seabank in the backdrop, with the splendid Alexandria Library on the other end of the bay, Darwish said.

"To me, the greatest draw would be that visitors would be able to see these amazing objects in their natural surrounding, not out of context on some museum shelf," said Stanley, who has carried out excavations around Alexandria but is not involved in the underwater dig.

Speaking to The Associated Press by phone from Washington, Stanley cautioned that the dangers to such a museum would be twofold — from storms, which in wintertime have been known to sink ships in Alexandria's harbor, and from earthquakes.

Egypt and UNESCO are still studying the feasibility of building such an underwater museum. No one knows where the money would come from, but there is hope construction could start as early as late 2010.

"If the study shows it's possible, this could become a magical place, both above and underwater," Hawass said. "If you can smell the sea here, you can smell the history."

Darwish, one of seven Egyptian archaeologists who are also qualified divers, said the country has had to rely on foreign expertise, mostly French and Greek, for diving archaeology expeditions around Alexandria. That will change, he says, as the Alexandria university educates more underwater archaeologists.

A temporary downtown museum will house the Isis pylon extracted Thursday and some 200 other objects removed from the sea here in the last decade.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press,

Egypt says mummy is Queen Hatshepsut

By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 27, 8:52 PM ET

CAIRO, Egypt - A tooth found in a relic box led archaeologists to identify a long-overlooked mummy as that of Egypt's most powerful female pharoah — possibly the most significant find since King Tutankhamun's tomb was uncovered in 1922, experts said Wednesday.

The mummy was identified as Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled for 20 years in the 15th century B.C., dressing like a man and wearing a fake beard. A monumental builder, she wielded more power than two other famous ancient Egyptian women, Cleopatra and Nefertiti, who unlike her never took the title of pharaoh.

But when she died, all traces of her mysteriously disappeared, including her mummy.

In 1903, a mummy was found lying on the ground next to the sarcophagus holding the mummy of the queen's wet nurse in a tomb in the Valley of Kings burial ground in Luxor. For decades, that mummy was left unidentified and remained in the tomb because it was thought to be insignificant.

A year ago, Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass began a search for Hatshepsut's mummy. At the same time, the Discovery Channel, which is to broadcast a documentary on the find in July, gave Egypt $5 million to set up a DNA lab to test mummies. The lab was established in the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Two months ago, the unidentified mummy was brought from Luxor to the museum for DNA testing. Hawass said his first clue that it could be the lost queen was the position of the left hand on her chest — a traditional sign of royalty in ancient Egypt.

Experts then made a stunning match. A tooth that had been found in a relic box displaying Hatshepsut's insignia and containing embalmed organs fit a gap in the mummy's jaw. Still uncompleted DNA testing also has shown similarities between the mummy and the mummy of Hatshepsut's grandmother, which was identified previously.

"We are 100 percent certain" the mummy belongs to Hatshepsut, Hawass told The Associated Press.

On Wednesday, Hawass unveiled both mummies — Hatshepsut's and that of her wet nurse, which initially was investigated as possibly being the queen.

The strikingly different mummies were displayed inside long glass cases draped with Egyptian flags. Hatshepsut's linen-wrapped mummy was bald and much larger than the slim, child-size mummy of the wet nurse, Sitr-In, which had rust-colored locks of hair.

Hawass said the queen's mummy suggested the woman was obese, probably suffered from diabetes, had liver cancer and died in her 50s.

Hatshepsut is believed to have stolen the throne from her young stepson, Thutmose III, who scratched her name from stone records in revenge after her death.

Her two-decade rule was the longest among ancient Egyptian queens, at a time of the New Kingdom's "golden age." She is said to have amassed enormous wealth, channeling it into building projects, and launched military campaigns as far away as the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq, and Nubia in what is now Sudan.

Ahead of Wednesday's announcement, molecular biologist Scott Woodward, director of the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation in Salt Lake City, Utah, was cautious.

"It's a very difficult process to obtain DNA from a mummy," said Woodward, who has done DNA research on mummies. "To make a claim as to a relationship, you need other individuals from which you have obtained DNA, to make a comparison between the DNA sequences."

Such DNA material would typically come from parents or grandparents. With female mummies, the most common type of DNA to look for is the mitochondrial DNA that reveals maternal lineage, said Woodward.

Egyptian molecular geneticist Yehia Zakaria Gad, who is on Hawass' team, said DNA bone samples were obtained from the mummy's hip bone and femur.

Scientists then extracted mitochondrial DNA and are now comparing them with samples from the mummy of Hatshepsut's grandmother, Ahmose Nefretari, he said. The preliminary results were "very encouraging," Gad said.

Molecular biologist Paul Evans, of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, said the discovery would be remarkable if DNA testing fully proves the mummy is Hatshepsut.

"It's clear that this is on the right track. Once the DNA is done and published, then we will know better," Evans told The Associated Press. "Hatshepsut is an individual who has a unique place in Egypt's history. To have her identified is on the same magnitude as King Tut's discovery."

Hatshepsut's most famous accomplishment is her funerary temple in ancient Thebes, on the west bank of the Nile in today's Luxor. The collonaded sandstone temple was built to serve as tribute to her power. Surrounding it are the Valley of Kings and the Valley of the Queens, the burial places of Egypt's pharaohs and their wives.

She was one of the most prolific builders among the pharaohs, commissioning hundreds of construction projects throughout both Upper and Lower Egypt. Almost every major museum in the world has a collection of Hatshepsut statuary.

British archaeologist Howard Carter had worked on excavating Hatshepsut's tomb before discovering the tomb of the boy-king, Tutankhamun, whose treasure of gold has become a symbol of ancient Egypt's splendor.