Cairo.- The excavations headed by the Dominican Kathleen Martinez has made this month’s cover of the magazine National Geographic, with an article by Chip Brown titled “Searching for the real Cleopatra.”

It tells the history and theories of Egypt’s last Pharaoh, as well as Martinez’s efforts that manage to convince the head of that country’s Supreme Council of the Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, that Cleopatra could be buried somewhere different from those which have been searched for decades.

It calls Martinez a young prodigy, who at the age of 19 had already earned her law degree.

Her theory on where the remains of the powerful Egyptian queen could be is widely described in the news article.

“I reached the conclusion that Taposiris Magna was one of the possible locations of Cleopatra’s secret tomb because her death was a deeply religious ritual of   importance, which was carried out with a spiritualized and very strict ceremony,” Martinez said.

“Cleopatra negotiated with Octavian to be allowed to be buried together with Marc Anthony in Egypt, because she wished they buried her with him to represent the legend of Isis and Osiris. The true backdrop of the cult to Osiris is that supposedly it confers immortality,” she said.

Martinez’s finds have been news around the world and have steered 20 percent of the tourists who visit Egypt toward Alexandria to take photos of the zone where the only Latino and only woman currently working and heading an expedition in that country.

After six years Taposiris Magna has become one of Egypt’s biggest archaeological digs, thanks to Martinez’s tenacious work, and if he reaches her goal would the most important archaeological feat, equaled only by Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922.