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Threshold to Cleopatra's mausoleum discovered off Alexandria coast
Guardian ^ | Wednesday, December 23, 2009 | Helena Smith

Posted on 01/01/2010 12:23:02 PM PST by SunkenCiv

A team of Greek marine archaeologists who have spent years conducting underwater excavations off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt have unearthed a giant granite threshold to a door that they believe was once the entrance to a magnificent mausoleum that Cleopatra VII, queen of the Egyptians, had built for herself shortly before her death. They believe the 15-tonne antiquity would have held a seven metre-high door so heavy that it would have prevented the queen from consoling her Roman lover before he died, reputedly in 30BC... Tzalas believes the discovery of the threshold sheds new light on an element of the couple's dying hours which has long eluded historians.

In the first century AD the Greek historian Plutarch wrote that Mark Antony, after being wrongly informed that Cleopatra had killed herself, had tried to take his own life. When the dying general expressed his wish to pass away alongside his mistress, who was hiding inside the mausoleum with her ladies-in-waiting, he was "hoisted with chains and ropes" to the building's upper floor so that he could be brought in to the building through a window.

Plutarch wrote, "when closed the [mausoleum's] door mechanism could not open again". The discovery in the Mediterranean Sea of such huge pieces of masonry at the entrance to what is believed to be the mausoleum would explain the historian's line. Tzalas said: "For years, archaeologists have wondered what Plutarch, a very reliable historian, meant by that. And now, finally, I think we have the answer."

(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: alexandria; antony; cleopatra; cleopatravii; egypt; godsgravesglyphs; markantony; romanempire; taposirismagna; zahihawass; zowiehawass
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To: SunkenCiv

when they open that door, they better watch their asp!


21 posted on 01/01/2010 4:29:58 PM PST by wildbill (You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)
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To: PzLdr; SunkenCiv

According to Sacajeweau, “but when she opened her mouth, she sounded like a choking chicken..”

I ask you, have you ever heard of such a thing?


22 posted on 01/01/2010 4:32:52 PM PST by wildbill (You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)
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To: wildbill

[choking chicken jokes automatic shutdown]

Nope. Cleo is reputed to have been the most enthusiastic fellatrix of all time, so maybe her voice sounded a bit, uh, rough. Herod the Great complained in a letter to Rome that, at their first meeting, Cleo asked that both dismiss their staff and servants, and when they were gone, wanted to ride him like a big boy.


23 posted on 01/01/2010 8:28:02 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year!)
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To: wildbill

Oh, okay, *Liz*, not Cleo. Yeah, I like that movie for the sets and staging, they really don’t make ‘me that way anymore. Supposedly the $50 million+ spent from the late years of the 1950s into about 1963 to produce that version of “Cleopatra” (there were at least three earlier versions I think, in the US film industry alone, including a silent version starring Theda Bara) would run in excess of $1 billion today, making the apples-to-oranges comparison result in the most expensive film of all time, not excluding “Titanic” and “Waterworld”.

Liz is not a great actress. IMHO, she’s not even pretty, although I’ve always very much liked that pic some gracious soul posted earlier in the thread.


24 posted on 01/01/2010 8:40:49 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year!)
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To: SunkenCiv

For an entertaining read on this topic, check out “The Memoirs of Cleopatra” by Margaret George. You can learn a lot more about Cleopatra, Caesar and Marc Anthony through this (obviously)fictionalized account. It’s been a few years since I read it and might do it again.


25 posted on 01/01/2010 10:51:53 PM PST by malkee (Actually I'm an ex-smoker--more than three years now -- But I think about it every day.)
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To: ApplegateRanch

LOL! Guess I had nothing to share.


26 posted on 01/02/2010 6:11:58 AM PST by wolfcreek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsd7DGqVSIc)
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To: Lockbar
But if the doors couldn't open again, then why did they have such big knockers?

The bog knockers were on Cleo

27 posted on 01/02/2010 8:50:07 AM PST by Ole Okie
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To: Ole Okie

Big knockers! Big knockers! < slap !>


28 posted on 01/02/2010 8:51:38 AM PST by Ole Okie
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To: SunkenCiv

“Liz is not a great actress. IMHO, she’s not even pretty.”

Son, wash your mouth out with lye soap.

Awards: 6 oscar nominations with two winners. I’m not going to list all the rest. go to IMDB.com.

Pretty? I think she is still a striking woman today considering her age (78 in Feb.)but man, she was univerally acclaimed as the most beautiful woman of the world during her youth.

I recently saw a rerun of Raintree County with Monty Clift and she was absolutely gorgeous with a figure that would have been memorialized by Phidias or Praxiteles or Micheangelo in their day.


29 posted on 01/02/2010 11:53:27 AM PST by wildbill (You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)
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To: wildbill

Imho, the only movie Liz was any good in was “A Place in the Sun.”


30 posted on 01/02/2010 1:52:05 PM PST by malkee (Actually I'm an ex-smoker--more than three years now -- But I think about it every day.)
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To: wildbill

And Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Barack Obama have all rec’d the Nobel Peace Prize. :’) Her win for “Butterfield 8” was attributed to her being on her deathbed shortly before the Oscars, when she caught some kind of respiratory bug while working on Cleopatra. Regarding her plain-ness, hey, at least I didn’t say “ugly as a mud fence”. :’)


31 posted on 01/02/2010 3:46:02 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year!)
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To: malkee

Thanks malkee!


32 posted on 01/02/2010 4:01:58 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year!)
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To: SunkenCiv

Cleo may not have been a great beauty, but as you say she had “talents” that would make up for that. :-))


33 posted on 01/04/2010 1:29:13 PM PST by colorado tanker
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