Dr. Kathleen Martinez x TILSCIENCE

The chat of a lifetime!

This is NOT a drill. We got to interview THE Dr. Kathleen Martinez.

Dr. Kathleen Martinez last excavation period standing in the underground tunnel they discovered.

I was so starstruck and in complete disbelief that she was sitting (virtually) in front of me that I forgot to hit record at the very beginning. Classic. Here’s what didn’t get on tape - me gushing to her about all of you and how much we love and admire her. She’s thrilled to know that so many of us are rooting for her, it made her so happy.

This interview is such a full circle moment for the tilscience community who have been watching my coverage of Dr. Martinez’s incredible journey to finding Cleopatra’s lost tomb.

What I mean by that is, at one point in the interview I was talking to Dr. Martinez about how she - like the total boss she is - cold emailed THE Robert Ballard of Titanic fame and asked him for his help to find Cleopatra.

Her team told her to not waste her time.

She told me, “But why not? I have understood during my life that sometimes it's yourself who puts the walls in front of you, because you believe they are not going to accept what you're proposing. When in reality it is you who is limiting yourself from doing things because you believe something that may or may not be true.”

Sure enough, Robert Ballard contacted her back the very same day saying he’d love to help (more on that later).

Funnily enough, this interview came about in the same way.

About 2 months ago now, I cold messaged Dr. Martinez on her IG, email and even LinkedIn. I told her how much my community and myself admire her work and I’d love to interview her. I put it out there and forgot about it.

2 weeks later, I got an email from her PR team saying that Dr. Martinez has watched all my videos about her and absolutely loves them! She’d love to do an interview with me.

So, without further ado, here’s the chat of the lifetime you’ve been waiting for.

Get you someone that looks at you like the way I look at Dr. Kathleen Martinez. No notes, she is simply perfection.

---

You’re about to read a section of the interview between Dr. Kathleen Martinez and Dr. Harini Bhat. To watch the full 1 hour video interview, consider becoming a paid subscriber of Today I Learned Science. If you’re already part of the paid tier, simply scroll to the bottom to view the video. Thank you for your support!!

Harini Bhat: I don’t think I ever heard the story of how you went from being a lawyer to an archeologist?

Kathleen: I was born in the Dominican Republic and since I was a little girl, I dreamt of Egypt. In my mind, it was the most amazing place in the world. And I have access to my father's private library because he is one of the most important intellectuals of the Dominican Republic. He's a professor also, philosophy, law, and Greek or Roman. So I have this special opportunity and he used to give me books every week to read and discuss with him. So he was a great teacher for me.

Harini Bhat: I didn't know that about you! That makes sense though, it comes through the family line! Was it always your goal to find Cleopatra and solve the mystery of her lost tomb?

Kathleen: Yes, I used to tell my parents that I want to be an archaeologist and one day I will go to Egypt and make great discoveries. And they laughed when I was a kid. But as I was growing up, they saw that I wanted to continue in that line. So, my father talked to me, told me that's not a possibility. You cannot be an archaeologist. That's not a profession for a woman. You have to go into a career that it's good for you. So I chose law. They told me he will never pay for go to college to study archeology. So I chose to become a lawyer, but I always dream to one day with my own sources to study archeology and go to Egypt.

But I believe my father somehow was right. Archaeology is not a career that is fancy and you have to risk your life many times and it's hard, it's really hard. You are mostly under the sun and Egypt, it's really hot, full of sand, a lot of animals around, bees, mosquitoes. It's really difficult and then when you discover a tunnel, you have to risk your life going down to this tunnel. So it's really, it's exciting, it's very exciting, but at the same time it's hard.

Harini Bhat: Oh, yeah, I can only imagine! Especially for you, because you have uncovered and discovered so many things. Also, you've just been a person of many firsts in this field, whether it's the first Hispanic woman and coming from a totally different field, but also against the odds. I feel like your entire story has been just against all odds. And you've been able to persevere over all these obstacles.

In fact, I believe the very first obstacle was even stating that Cleopatra's tomb could be at Taposiris Magna, right? When everyone else said she's not there. So what specifically drew you to that location in your research?

Kathleen: Because with my training as a criminal lawyer, what I did is I took Cleopatra as if she was my client and I was representing her. And I want to be her lawyer for history. I want to know what's the truth because she was a victim of propaganda by the Romans.

So I want to understand who she really was by studying about her life. What I did is I prepared a map of ancient Alexandria and I placed all the possible locations of her tomb, and took into consideration information that probably an archaeologist would not do. Like for example, I took all the information of ancient writers of her last days of her life. We know that she visited the tomb where she buried Marc Antony twice in two weeks because all the ancient writers confirmed that, Plutarch, the Ocasios. Also, on the day she committed suicide, she went for the last time to the tomb of Marc Antony. What is important here is that she went and came back the same day. So it gave me an idea that she could not go further than 100 kilometers, probably not more than even 50 km, because she had to go and come back with the transportation at that time.

So, I made this map of Ancient Alexandria, and I looked for all the temples in a radius of maximum 100 kilometers. Then I narrowed that down to 50 kilometers and I found one. One which was 47 kilometers from Alexandria. I started trying to study about this temple, but there was no information. This was exciting because in law when there's no information, that means somebody has tried to hide something.

There was not much information and nobody could confirm to whom the temple was dedicated to because nobody had found the foundational plates of the temple. So I decided this is it. IT opened like a green light that this is it, she has to be in this area. So, I started studying more and then I decided to travel to Egypt in 2004 to study more.

Harini Bhat: When you found the underground tunnels, what was going through your mind and what, for people who may not be familiar, did those tunnels lead to, if anything?

Kathleen: Well, we didn't know at the time. The tunnels, when we started cleaning them, we found the shaft, a cut in the bedrock. It was covered by around one meter of sand. Then when we started excavating we reached this small hole.

So when we started excavating, we found more holes in the side indicated that it was a staircase going down. So this is the moment when your heart started beating so strongly because I said, this is it, this is a tunnel. What really made me happy is my team already was skeptical that we could find those possible shafts or tunnels. So they couldn't believe what they were seeing, everybody was in shock. But, we didn't know at that time how deep the tunnels were. And we are excavating with buckets and our hands. So you can’t go forward that quickly. You have to go slowly.

We reached 25 meters - and just so have an idea, it’s like a 10 story building down. It was incredible. So we were going down, down. We didn’t know where we were going. It could be a chamber, it could be a tunnel. And then we reached the bottom. Everything was completely full of sand and big blocks.

Along the way, we discovered some pieces of statues, some busts made of marble. So, we knew we were on the right track. Then, when we reached down to the bottom, we saw that the tunnel was going in two directions, one to the south and one to the north. But once you're there, you cannot breathe that well. There were also snakes, cobras and asps. Many of my team told me that they cannot, they don't want to risk their life.

The only way that they would enter the tunnels at that time, is if I go first. It was hard, but it was incredible. When you have an idea and then suddenly, because of your effort and the work of the teamwork, you can make it. What people don't know is that it takes a whole season, which is around two months, to clean only 30 to 40 meters inside the tunnels.

Being so deep down in the earth is exactly like when you're diving. You cannot be there eight hours or ten hours because you start to feel bad after three, four hours. So it's almost the same and we're limited in time. Also, if I have a big team, not all my guys can go down there because there's no space.

So, it took me 16 years to reach what I thought was the end. I thought it was the end of the tunnel because I was approaching the highway, the modern highway. But then when we cleaned it, we saw something that I never expected. The tunnels went beneath the highway, the modern highway, into a resort, and then into the sea.

So, that changed the whole history of the area. Why? Because the information that we had about this temple, is that the temple, what we see today, was the limit of the temple, but it wasn't. There's still three kilometers more of the temple extended into the sea.

Harini Bhat: Wow. My goodness.

Kathleen: So that's why it took me so many years to put together all the pieces of this puzzle, because for 2000 years, this area has been destroyed, not only by manmade destruction, but also because in that area in the northern coast of Egypt and also in Turkey, has been impacted many times by several and very strong earthquakes and tsunamis that destroyed the area. What is completely unexpected is that we have historical records that there was a huge destruction in Alexandria City. That earthquake destroyed Alexandria Library, destroyed Cleopatra's Palace, and all of that area, the Royal Quarter completely. Historians have described how that area was, the Royal Quarters, before the earthquake. So we know what was in that area. But, everything about Taposiris Magna has been destroyed or disappeared. So this information is huge because we're adding a body of information that nobody imagined could be possible.

Even though we’ve been searching for 19 years, they are not really years because during the year maximum I can work for 4 months. So, if we put it in terms of time we actually were able to work, it's not more than four years.

Harini Bhat: Wow. That is just phenomenal. I didn't realize that it took that long to excavate the entire tunnel. That is amazing. And when you guys did excavate the tunnel, you were finding other objects. The last update was that you found a sanctuary next to Taposiris Magna that led to a processional avenue. Can you just talk about more about what you found that provided more evidence that this temple is dedicated to the Goddess Isis and that Cleopatra could be buried nearby?

Kathleen: Yes, the most important is that there's two masterpieces that we discovered. One is the foundation deposit or foundation plates, which is just like the size of a cell phone today. The whole religious center is around five kilometers. So, you have to find a foundation plate buried somewhere into this area that is covered with big blocks. So, it's the most difficult artifact and the most valuable one for an archaeologist to ever discover. Since Napoleon’s time they’ve been trying to find this foundation plate. Napoleon sent a team of expert and they were searching for the Foundation Plates and they couldn't find it in 1801.

Then from there, many expeditions, the most famous Egyptologists, like Evaristo Breccia, the Italian Egyptologist that became the director of the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria, he searched for more than 20 years for the Foundation Plates, and he couldn't find it. And then he wrote a book saying there was no foundation Plates. It's because he didn't find it and he thought nobody will. Then Grossman, who is a very famous German archaeologist and Egyptologist, searched for the foundation Plates, he couldn't find it. Four Americans searched for these foundation Plates, Hungarians, Egyptians, German, and for 200 years no one could find it.

For me, it only took three months to find them. I want to prove that the temple was dedicated to Isis, not because I say so or because I have this idea after 10 years studying the whole life of Queen Cleopatra, but because it made sense to me.

But the only way to prove it was with archaeological evidence. And then when we discovered the foundation plate. You cannot imagine when we found the foundation late, and I was able to touch it and look at it and then able to read what is says, because it was written in Greek and in hieroglyphics. It has the cartouche of the pharaoh and says this temple was dedicated to Goddess Isis.

It was like opening a whole world for me. It was incredible because at that moment, everything made sense. It was dedicated to Goddess Isis.

Since I am from the Dominican Republic and from a university that i snot that well known, competing with those important Egyptologists, they gave me a very short time to prove my theory. But, the discovery of the foundation plates changed what the Egyptian authorities thought about me.

We were able to continue the project and many other things have been discovered. So far we have more than 2,000 artifacts. We found one of the most important cemeteries or acropolis with 21 catacombs and more than 800 human remains. We have mummies. And most of the catacombs are from the time of Queen Cleopatra, first century. So we are now excavating for all the people that were close to Queen Cleopatra.

Harini Bhat: There were also coins with her face on them that were found in the other sanctuary. And busts that were found there all of Greco Roman in their nature. So there are just all these things that seem to be adding up that Cleopatra was there, or at least her people were there.

Kathleen: Well, she had to choose a place to be buried. And one of the things that I explain is at the time of her death, she knew that they were surrendered by traitors. Cleopatra did not accompany Marc Antony to the battle in Alexandria against the Romans because she didn't want to be captured alive.

She knew the Romans would give her a very hard death. They hated her. So she stayed and built a mausoleum where she stayed with her maid, but also with all her treasures, because the Roman wanted her wealth too. Cleopatra was the richest woman on earth, so they wanted all the treasures of Egypt.

But, they also wanted to set a lesson to all women at that time to not be like her.

What had Cleopatra done? Well, she was the first woman who studied formally. She was a scientist. She was a specialist in chemistry. She was one of the first, maybe the first woman who studied the fetus. She was a philosopher. She spoke nine languages - all the languages of her time. She was a musician, but also she was a mother of four children. She was a queen and she was a wife. She accomplished so much. And she was the first pharaoh, women pharaoh, that changed the rules because before her, there were four other women pharaohs and one of them was Hatshepsut, who ruled more than 1,000 years before Queen Cleopatra.

But in order for her to rule, she had to dress as a man. And Cleopatra said, no more. Women are capable. This is the sin that she committed. She tried to prove that it was not about gender, it was about substance. But, the Romans don't want women to study, they don't want women to threaten them or be able to discuss politics as Cleopatra did. So, they considered her dangerous. That's why they wanted her dead. And this is one of the reasons I am searching for her because she deserved to be found and tell the world her own story. Because for me, h er story is a story of courage. She was very, very advanced for her time.

Harini Bhat: They say all roads lead to the ocean and in this case, it seems like it's no different. You said there was an earthquake in the area of Taposiris Magna, that potentially could now be underwater and the processional avenue led to the sea as did the underground tunnels. So, now you're doing underwater explorations, right?

Kathleen: I thought I could request permission from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to explore the underwater area at the Mediterranean Sea in front of Taposiris Magna. My team start laughing and say, well, that's impossible. I said, well, yeah, everything that we have done so far has been named impossible and yet it has not been. Let's explore.

So I went to request this permit. It took me two years for them to actually give me this permit. And actually I got it because of COVID. During the COVID time no other archaeologist or expedition was willing to work in Egypt. But I said, it's fine. Nothing is going to happen to me. I will go. I was the only one in 2020 that decided to work.

Because all the archaeological information was leading me to understand that there was something missing of the original size of the temple. But I couldn't explore without a permit. It took two years as I said, but when they gave me the authorization. But again, instead of giving me two months, like you usually get for a season, they gave me only two weeks. It seemed that it was impossible. Again, it's always a challenge. I said, okay, I’ll take these two weeks, we can do something. It's a vast ocean, but we know the tunnels, we have the GPS points of the tunnels, so what I'm planning to do is go with divers and only search in this 1-3 km area to try to locate the tunnels.

So, we go in and dive, but it was completely covered. The whole area was completely covered with sediment, so it was impossible to see anything. And we didn't have the permit to excavate, only to dive.

So I thought it would be impossible, but day 10, you know what happened? A big storm, after 15 years without storms in the northern coast, a big storm came for three days, and after the storm was the last day of our two week period.

We go back in the water and the storm had removed all the sediment underwater. So, on the very last day of the permit we saw the remains of the tunnel were there.

Harini Bhat: No way. Oh my gosh. Amazing.

Kathleen: So...I think at least I have some help (she points to up above). One anecdote, which was really funny, is the zodiac that we were exploring the area in was named Julius Caesar.

Harini Bhat: That's a twist of fate for you there. That's too funny.

Kathleen: And that’s not all, once we entered inside the sea, a huge tide came and turned down the Julius Caesar. All the divers fell out right in the exact area where the tunnel was.

Harini Bhat: Wow.

Kathleen: We immediately saw all the remains of the limestone blocks and we saw the tunnel might continue. It was the last day, but we at least got the information we needed to be able to apply again.

We did the second exploration, we expanded a little bit, and we started discovering underwater remains of pottery and other important things leading us to other locations. Then the location started to become bigger and bigger. So the next step happened last year when we decided that the important thing was to map the area with technology. Then I had to search who has this technology and who will join the mission because you cannot do everything.

So, last season, I contact Robert Ballard. He's an oceanographer from the United States, and he's the one who discovered the Titanic, the Bismarck, and more than 150 sunken ships, modern and ancient. He's the director of the Ocean Exploration Society and I contacted him and I explained a little bit about my project.

Harini Bhat: I want to say real quick that this was also an instance where your team was like, he's not going to respond to you..there's no way, right?

Kathleen: Yes, when I discussed who's the best in the world, and it's Robert Ballard, I will contact him, they said, don't waste your time. He's not going to answer. I say, it's okay if he doesn't answer.

Why not? I said, I have understand during my life that sometimes it's yourself who put the walls in front of you, because you believe they are not going to accept what you're proposing. It is you who is limiting yourself from doing things because you believe something that it may or may not be true. So, I contact him and I explained the project and actually he called me the same day and told me he was Googling me and realized we were very similar.

Robert Ballard, as a young oceanographer, had this idea about where the Titanic might be. Everybody loved of him, so he joined a mission, a French mission for two years under a very, very famous oceanographer and specialist. Ballard was explaining to them that the position where they were looking at the Titanic for was wrong.

They didn't listen to him for two years. Finally, he decided to take a submarine and go by himself just a few days before the expedition was about to finish. And he found it. So he thought that there were some similarities in his life and my life, and he wanted to give me this opportunity and join the mission. And I really appreciate that.

Harini Bhat: That's all the questions I have. I mean, I could talk to you for hours, I'm sure, but I want to be mindful of your time. But thank you so, SO much for taking the time to speak to me. It's just been absolutely lovely. I'm so excited for you. So best of luck. And I'm sure we'll be in contact soon.

Kathleen: Yes, it was a big pleasure!

This is the end of the interview preview, to view the full one hour video interview, please consider becoming a paid subscriber of Today I Learned Science’s work. Exclusive interviews such as these are just one of the many benefits of the paid tier! Your support is greatly appreciated!