Kathleen Martínez
Kathleen Teresa Martínez Berry (born 1966) is a Dominican archaeologist, lawyer, and diplomat. She leads the Egyptian‑Dominican team in Alexandria and works as the Dominican Republic’s minister counselor in charge of cultural affairs at the embassy in Egypt. She is best known for her search for Cleopatra’s tomb.
She was born in Santo Domingo in 1966. Her father, Fausto Martínez, was a professor and legal scholar, and her mother has Franco‑English roots. Martínez studied law at the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña and English at Brown University. She earned her law degree at 19 and also has master’s degrees in finance and archaeology. She began work as a lawyer before turning her full focus to archaeology.
Her interest in Cleopatra began after a discussion in 1990. Martínez believes Cleopatra was a remarkable figure who knew medicine, law, philosophy, and poetry, and she argues that her tomb might be inside a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis. Using ancient texts, she mapped possible burial sites and identified 21 locations linked to Isis and Osiris. She focused on the temple of Taposiris Magna near Alexandria.
Martínez first visited Egypt in 2002, met archaeologist Zahi Hawass, and started working at the site. She funded the early expeditions herself and established a Dominican project to dig at Taposiris Magna. Excavations began in 2004, and she moved to Egypt in 2005 to devote herself to archaeology.
Taposiris Magna is a temple by Lake Mariout, about 50 kilometers west of Alexandria. In 2008, ground‑penetrating radar revealed tunnels and possible burial chambers. The project gained attention in 2011 with a National Geographic cover story. In 2016, more radar work helped map new chambers. By 2018, dozens of artifacts and a large cemetery with many mummies from the same period had been found.
In 2019 there was some public debate about whether Cleopatra’s tomb could be in a temple, with Hawass publicly questioning the idea. Martínez defended her hypothesis.
In 2021, Egyptian‑Dominican researchers announced tombs and golden tongue amulets for the dead in the Taposiris Magna area, along with mummies from the Greek and Roman periods. A documentary about her work, Cleopatra’s Final Secret, premiered on National Geographic in 2025. In 2018, Cairo opened the exhibition “10 Years of Dominican Archaeology in Egypt,” showcasing Martínez’s discoveries from the Ptolemaic period.
Martínez is married to José Nazar, a Chilean‑American investor who owns the Houdini estate in Los Angeles.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 06:00 (CET).