By the time Dr. Robert Ballard gets on the call to tell this story, he’s already found the Titanic, mapped the Bismarck, and pushed submersibles down into the black smokers of the deep ocean. This time, his voice holds the kind of thrill that only a brand-new mystery can bring.
“Ken Garrett, the National Geographic photographer, rang me up and said he wanted to introduce me to this woman searching for Cleopatra’s tomb,” Ballard recalled from his command center in Connecticut. “I went online, did my homework, and was blown away. She approached the whole thing like a crime scene.”
Dr. Kathleen Martinez, a Dominican archaeologist and criminal lawyer, had been excavating for nearly two decades at Taposiris Magna—a windswept temple complex south of Alexandria, dedicated to Isis, Cleopatra’s chosen goddess. Her quest was audacious: to find Cleopatra VII’s lost tomb, a burial shrouded in legend since the last queen of Egypt and her lover, Mark Antony, took their own lives in 30 BCE.
“I found her fascinating,” Ballard said. “I’ve spent my career as an outsider stepping into someone else’s field, so I saw a kindred spirit.”
A Tunnel to the Sea
Martinez’s background was unusual. She grew up in the Dominican Republic in a house full of books. She trained as a lawyer at Brown University, specializing in criminal law before turning to archaeology. Her strategy at Taposiris Magna mirrored an investigator’s: assemble the evidence, follow the patterns, and ignore conventional wisdom when it doesn’t add up.
For years, Martinez had been unearthing evidence of a forgotten temple, but in 2017 her team discovered something extraordinary. A vertical shaft plunged 25 meters through limestone and turned toward the Mediterranean. The tunnel’s marble walls and painstaking construction hinted at more than just ritual passageways. It pointed to something offshore, something man-made that was now submerged beneath the sea.
That’s when Martinez needed a marine explorer. “She asked Ken if he knew anyone who worked underwater,” Ballard remembered, laughing. “And Ken said, ‘I’ve got just the guy.’”
Ballard is not an archaeologist but a geophysicist with a PhD in marine geology. He arrived with his toolbox of acoustic technology. It includes side-scan sonar, sub-bottom profilers, and multi-beam systems that can map the seafloor in intricate 3D. Working with Dr. Larry Mayer and the University of New Hampshire, plus Egyptian Navy hydrographers, he mounted a high-resolution survey, sweeping the seabed to scan the seabed at the tunnel’s endpoint.
“The workflow is the same whether you’re looking for the Titanic or Cleopatra’s harbor,” he said. “You mow the lawn with sonar, make a 3D model, then send in divers to ground-truth what you’ve found.”
What they found stunned them: the outlines of an ancient harbor, a breakwater, and a massive structure. Amphora fragments, anchor stones, and a basalt pedestal dated precisely to Cleopatra’s era (and nothing later).
“It’s clearly human-made,” Ballard said. “An entire commercial port.”
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Erased From History
In ancient Egypt, some areas were marked off-limits to divers and fishermen. Ballard can’t help but be intrigued. “How do you write an entire port out of history?” he asked. “They literally chiseled it out of the hieroglyphics.”
Why would a harbor so prominent vanish from Egypt’s annals? In antiquity, some zones were restricted; divers were forbidden. Ballard wonders whether the erasure the reason why. “Protection, politics, looting—take your pick,” he said. “Something very deliberate happened here.”
If the tunnel and the harbor align as they appear to, the team could be closing in on one of archaeology’s greatest prizes: the final resting place of Egypt’s last pharaoh.
The Evolution of Maritime Exploration
For Ballard, Kathleen Martinez herself is the heart of this story. “She broke barriers the way Cleopatra did,” he said. “She’s been underestimated, challenged, and yet she’s persisted. In many ways, she’s Cleopatra’s reincarnation.”
He stresses that he’s not the star of this project. “This is Kathleen’s story. I’m a supporting actor. Most of my team are women. Exploration today is very different from when I started.”
Even the way Ballard works has evolved. Autonomous drones and remote command centers mean he can survey the seafloor without leaving his basement. “We operated an entire Guadalcanal search from a hotel lobby once,” he joked. “It’s the future of exploration.”
Past Merges With Present
Ballard’s résumé already includes some of the 20th century’s most famous undersea discoveries. His mother once teased him that the Titanic, “that rusty old ship,” would overshadow his scientific breakthroughs.
What excites him most is not fame but the possibility of rewriting a story long told by the victors. “History about Cleopatra was written by the Romans,” he said. “But she was an extraordinary woman. Kathleen’s work could change how we see her.”
The tunnel waits, the harbor sleeps beneath the waves, and two outsiders are closing in on a mystery that has lasted two millennia. Martinez has since secured new permits to drill and excavate the site. For Ballard, it’s another entry in a lifetime of firsts. “Maybe now they’ll remember me for Cleopatra, too,” Ballard mentioned.
A Mystery Worthy of History’s Greatest Queen
As Ballard speaks, it’s clear that the thrill of exploration hasn’t faded. From that command center in his home where he “can run autonomous drones from the basement,” he still hunts the past beneath the waves. But there’s a special weight to this mission.
“Cleopatra was an extraordinary woman,” he said. “History was written by her conquerors, but she deserves to be seen in full.”
If the queen’s final secret lies somewhere between the sands of Taposiris Magna and the seabed offshore, Bob Ballard is determined to help Kathleen Martinez find it. If they succeed, it will be the discovery of a lifetime and permanently leave their mark alongside Cleopatra’s vast history.
