Cleopatra's Lost Tomb May Have Been Found!

Ellen, Oprah, Mother Nature, three of the most famous women in the world, but right up there with them is the one and only Cleopatra. And when someone's so famous, gossip follows. You won't believe who Mother Nature has had sex with. But today is all about Cleo. From the truth of her birth to the truth of her death, with a little help from History.com, these are 10 strange facts about Cleopatra you need to know. Before we begin, make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to our channel, and click the notification bell for more amazing videos every day. That being said, let's begin. Number 10. Did you know Cleopatra's lost tomb might have been found? Let's hope Shane Gill doesn't own the rights to the phrase, did you know, because you're about to hear it a lot. Ten times to be precise. Bradley Jolly, reporting for the Mirror newspaper in January of 2019, broke the story that shook all fans of ancient Egypt to their core. Archaeologists in Egypt have identified an area in Taposiris Magna, 18 miles from Alexandria, that they believe may house the tomb of Cleopatra herself. In case you didn't know, her tomb has been long lost and is one of Egypt's greatest mysteries. But archaeologists are convinced they have, at long last, identified the hidden location of the crypt in which both she and Marc Antony are buried. One of these archaeologists, an Egyptian by the name of Zahi Hawass, said, The burial site has been finally estimated to be in the region of Taposiris Magna, 30 kilometers or 18 miles away from Alexandria. The digging has begun, and all those with a fascination for ancient Egypt await the news with bated breath. While we do, let's explore nine other strange facts about the Queen of the Nile. Number 9. Did you know Cleopatra was not Egyptian? She is one of the most famous Egyptian women of all time, along with Nefertiti, the Sphinx, and some other third one. But she was not, technically speaking, Egyptian. While Cleopatra was born in Egypt, she traced her family origins to Macedonian Greece and Ptolemy Soter, one of Alexander the Great's generals. Ptolemy took the reigns of Egypt after Alexander's death in 323 BC, and he launched a dynasty of Greek-speaking rulers that lasted for nearly three centuries. Despite not being ethnically Egyptian, Cleopatra embraced many of her country's ancient customs and was the first member of the Ptolemaic line to learn the Egyptian language. She made a real point of immersing herself in the culture and becoming one of them. The woman dubbed the Queen of the Nile wasn't Egyptian in the technical sense of the word, but she more than proved that she counted as their great queen. Number 8. Did you know Cleopatra helped kill three of her siblings? Manipulation, power grabs, and murder plots are all part of day-to-day living when you're a member of a big and important family. It's the truth of life that Game of Thrones is built upon. Vicious power grabs and plots to murder your kin were as much a Ptolemaic tradition as not bothering with a dentist is a British one. And these murderous machinations stretched to Cleopatra and her own brothers and sisters. Her first sibling husband, Ptolemy XIII, ran her out of Egypt after she tried to take sole possession of the throne, and the pair later faced off in a civil war. Cleopatra regained the upper hand by teaming with Julius Caesar, and Ptolemy drowned in the Nile River after being defeated in battle. Following the war, Cleopatra remarried to her younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, but she's believed to have had him murdered in a bid to make her son her co-ruler. In 41 BC, she also engineered the execution of her sister, Arsinoe, who she considered a rival to the throne. She was as clever as Tywin Lannister and as vicious as Ramsay Snow, a master of deceit, deception, and brutality. But murderous intentions and a hunger for power were not all she shared with the fictional characters of George R.R. Martin's Westeros. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed I just mentioned her marrying her brother. Twice. Well... Number 7. Did you know Cleopatra was the product of incest? A bit like, spoiler alert, Joffrey Baratheon, Cleopatra was the product of incest. It's actually kinda common for royal families to get a bit too cozy with one another. Many royal families are so incestuous that their family trees look like a spirograph. And like many royal houses, members of the Ptolemaic dynasty often married within the family as they saw it as a way of preserving the purity of their bloodline. We here at The Finest try not to judge, but hey, incest is weird, but whatever. More than a dozen of Cleopatra's ancestors tied the knot with cousins or siblings, and Cleo's own parents were brother and sister. In the world of Game of Thrones, incest is a catalyst for madness. It's why the Mad King went mad after all, because his DNA was a hotbed of incest. As we mentioned just moments ago, Cleopatra kept up the, for want of a better term, family traditions, and eventually married both of her adolescent brothers, each of whom served as her ceremonial spouse and co-regent at different times during her reign. Number 6. Did you know Cleopatra was in Rome when Caesar was assassinated? Coincidence? Or... Cleopatra joined Julius Caesar in Rome beginning in 46 BC, and her presence seems to have caused quite the stir. Caesar made no bones about admitting she was his mistress. He pretty much bragged about it. When she came to the city, she even brought their love child in tow. This pair may have had an affair, but they absolutely owned it. Many Romans were scandalized when he erected a gilded statue of her in the Temple of Venus Genetrix, although the big JC didn't care about their anger. Cleopatra was forced to flee Rome after Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate in 44 BC, but by then she had made her mark on the city. Her exotic hairstyle and pearl jewelry became a fashion trend, and according to historian Joanne Fletcher, so many Roman women adopted the Cleopatra look that their statuary has often been mistaken for Cleopatra herself. Number 5. Did you know she founded her own drinking club? But of course, Caesar was not the only man with whom Cleopatra shacked up with. There was also the Roman politician and general, Mark Antony. Cleopatra first began her legendary love affair with the Marky Mark of the Roman Bunch way, way back in 41 BC. Their relationship had a political component. Cleopatra needed Antony to protect her crown and maintain Egypt's independence, while Antony needed access to Egypt's riches and resources. But they were also famously fond of each other's company. According to ancient sources, they spent the winter of 41 to 40 BC living a life of leisure and excess in Egypt, and even formed their own drinking society known as the inimitable livers. The group engaged in nightly feasts and wine binges, and its members occasionally took part in elaborate games and contests. One of Antony and Cleopatra's favorite activities supposedly involved wandering the streets of Alexandria in disguise and playing pranks on its residents. Number 4. Did you know Cleopatra led a fleet in a naval battle? Often when we talk of Cleopatra, we talk of her beauty. In many ways, that's become her defining trait. She was the Kim Kardashian of her day. Which is a shame, because she also kicked more ass than someone who seriously did not like donkeys. While Kimmy K has proven her worth by recently attending lawyer school, cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme, the Queen of the Nile led fleets into battle. Cleopatra eventually married Mark Antony and had three children with him, but their relationship also spawned a massive scandal in Rome. Antony's rival Octavian used propaganda to portray him as a traitor under the sway of a scheming seductress, and in 32 BC, the Roman Senate declared war on Cleopatra. The conflict reached its climax the following year in a famous naval battle at Actium. Cleopatra personally led several dozen Egyptian warships into the fray alongside Antony's fleet, but they were no match for Octavian's navy. The battle soon devolved into a rout, and Cleopatra and Antony were forced to break through the Roman line and flee to Egypt. Number 3. Did you know Cleopatra thought she was a goddess? And we don't mean in the Beyonce sense, in which a strong, powerful woman will refer to herself as a goddess in a brilliant and empowering takedown of the patriarchy. Oh no, we mean she was literally convinced she was a god manifest on Earth. And we thought Elon Musk was arrogant. Cleopatra believed herself to be a living goddess, and she often used clever stagecraft to woo potential allies and reinforce her divine status. A famous example of her flair for the dramatic came in 48 BC, when Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria during her feud with her brother, Ptolemy XIII. Knowing Ptolemy's forces would thwart her attempts to meet with the Roman general, Cleopatra had herself wrapped in a carpet – some sources say it was a linen sack – and smuggled into his personal quarters. Caesar was dazzled by the sight of the young queen in her royal garb, and the two soon became allies and lovers. Cleopatra later employed a similar bit of theatre in her 41 BC encounter with Mark Antony. When summoned to meet the Roman triumvir Antarsus, she is said to have arrived on a golden barge adorned with purple sails and rowed by oars made of silver. Cleopatra had been made up to look like the goddess Aphrodite, and she sat beneath a gilded canopy while attendants dressed as cupids fanned her and burned sweet-smelling incense. Antony, who considered himself the embodiment of the Greek god Dionysus, was instantly enchanted. Number 2 Did you know a film about her was one of the priciest ever made? Move over Avatar, Avengers, Endgame, and some third example. The Queen of the Nile has been portrayed on the silver screen by the likes of Claudette Colbert and Sophia Loren, but she was most famously played by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 sword and sandal epic Cleopatra. The film was plagued by production problems and script issues, and its budget eventually soared from $2 million to $44 million, including some $200,000 just to cover the cost of Taylor's costumes. It was the most expensive movie ever made at the time of its release, and nearly bankrupted its studio despite raking in a fortune at the box office. If inflation is taken into account, Cleopatra remains one of the priciest movies in history even today. Number 1 Did you know Cleopatra may not actually have been all that beautiful? Now of course beauty is subjective, we're all the apples of someone's eye, and we have no doubt that to some, if not many, our girl Cleo would have been a 10 out of 10 grade A stunner. So when we say, did you know Cleopatra may not have actually been all that beautiful, let me clarify exactly what I mean by that. All stories about Patti, as nobody called her, focus heavily on her beauty. She remains to this day one of the names you drop when discussing history's most beautiful women, but the Greek biographer Plutarch has a far different theory. He says that those who knew her weren't actually all that impressed by her looks, but her intelligence and her conversational skills. Cleo's real defining features were how smart and charming she was, but this was a time in a culture where looks meant everything. Ancient Egypt was decadent and fashion conscious, so Patti may have used her finances and intelligence to rebrand herself in the public eye as more traditional pretty than she actually was. For example, coins minted in Egypt gave her a stronger jawline than she actually had. Though she may be famous for seducing both Mark Antony and Julius Caesar, the third most famous man with the initials JC after Jeremy Corbyn and the other one, the truth is that they fell in love with her incredible brain, not her body. Which of these Cleopatra facts shocked you the most? And do you have more admiration for her now or less? Also, check out our other cool stuff showing up on screen right now. See you next time.