Health & Medicine
Cleopatra's Sister: Bones Found Could Solve Murder Mystery (VIDEO)
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Feb 27, 2013 12:04 PM EST
Archaeologists certainly have interesting jobs. They get to dig up bones of past royals--and that is certainly the case for a Viennese archaeologist who lectured in North Carolina this week. Their claim? To have identified none other than the bones of Cleopatra's murdered sister or half-sister. However, not everyone is so convinced that this is true.
Hike Thur, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a former director of excavations at the site where the bones were found, said that a DNA test was performed in the hopes of confirming the claims. However, the 2,000-year-old bones had been moved and handled too many times to get uncontaminated results.
"It didn't bring the results we hoped to find," Thur told the Charlotte News-Observer. She will lecture on her research March 1 at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.
According to ancient history, Arsinoe IV was Cleopatra's younger half-sister or sister, both of them fathered by Ptolemy XII Auletes, though whether they shared a mother is unclear.Cleopatra saw her half-sister as a threat and had her murdered in 41 B.C.
In 1904, archaeologists began excavating a ruined structure in Ephesus known as the Octagon for its shape. In 1926, they revealed a burial chamber in the Octagon, holding the bones of a young woman-who they know believe to be her sister.
However, as previously stated, many are skeptical about these alleged results.
The skull of the possible murdered princess disappeared in Germany during World War II, but Thur found the rest of the bones in two niches in the burial chamber in 1985. Forensic analysis revealed them to belong to a girl of 15 or 16, which would make Arsinoe surprisingly young for someone who was supposed to have played a major leadership role in a war against Rome years before her death. Regardless, Thur dismisses those criticisms.
"This academic questioning is normal," she told the News-Observer. "It happens. It's a kind of jealousy."
Want to know more about the history of the murder? Find out here, courtesy of YouTube.
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First Posted: Feb 27, 2013 12:04 PM EST
Archaeologists certainly have interesting jobs. They get to dig up bones of past royals--and that is certainly the case for a Viennese archaeologist who lectured in North Carolina this week. Their claim? To have identified none other than the bones of Cleopatra's murdered sister or half-sister. However, not everyone is so convinced that this is true.
Hike Thur, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a former director of excavations at the site where the bones were found, said that a DNA test was performed in the hopes of confirming the claims. However, the 2,000-year-old bones had been moved and handled too many times to get uncontaminated results.
"It didn't bring the results we hoped to find," Thur told the Charlotte News-Observer. She will lecture on her research March 1 at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.
According to ancient history, Arsinoe IV was Cleopatra's younger half-sister or sister, both of them fathered by Ptolemy XII Auletes, though whether they shared a mother is unclear.Cleopatra saw her half-sister as a threat and had her murdered in 41 B.C.
In 1904, archaeologists began excavating a ruined structure in Ephesus known as the Octagon for its shape. In 1926, they revealed a burial chamber in the Octagon, holding the bones of a young woman-who they know believe to be her sister.
However, as previously stated, many are skeptical about these alleged results.
The skull of the possible murdered princess disappeared in Germany during World War II, but Thur found the rest of the bones in two niches in the burial chamber in 1985. Forensic analysis revealed them to belong to a girl of 15 or 16, which would make Arsinoe surprisingly young for someone who was supposed to have played a major leadership role in a war against Rome years before her death. Regardless, Thur dismisses those criticisms.
"This academic questioning is normal," she told the News-Observer. "It happens. It's a kind of jealousy."
Want to know more about the history of the murder? Find out here, courtesy of YouTube.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone