By John Bordsen.
Long-buried bones and a missing monarch. Add
some historical notoriety and modern technology and you have a heck of a
captivating, science-driven story.
Just this month, it was
announced that bones found under a parking lot in Leicester, England, belonged
to King Richard III. DNA evidence, according to the lead archaeologist at the
excavation, proved this “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
For Hilke Thur, a Vienna-based
archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a similar quest awaits
empirical closure. The locale is more exotic – western Turkey – and the
evidence is much more difficult to analyze: The bones in question are a bit
more than 2,000 years old.
Thur will cover this and
other aspects of her work in a March 1 lecture at the N.C. Museum of History in
Raleigh.
The title: “Who Murdered
Cleopatra’s Sister? And Other Tales from Ephesus.”
In a recent interview, Thur
discussed…
What
took her to Ephesus
“I’m an architect as well as
an archaeologist, and Ephesus – a large and important city on the coast of Asia
Minor centuries before it became part of the Roman Empire – has long been one
of the biggest archaeological sites. It is the main excavation of the Austrian
Archaeological Institute.
“I was a student when I
started working there in 1975, and have based a great deal of my career around
the site. From 1997 to 2005 I was assistant director of the Ephesus
excavations.
“An English engineer
directed the first archaeological digs there in 1869. But since 1895 only
Austrian-led projects have permission to do that, though Turks sometimes have
excavations. I’d like to add that it’s quite an international team there, with
researchers from all over the world.
“My specialty is
interpreting buildings and monuments. The excavations of one monument, The
Octagon, began in 1904. In 1926, a grave chamber was found inside The Octagon.
The skeleton inside it has been interpreted to be that of a young woman about
age 20.”
What
thickened the plot
“When I was working with the
architecture of The Octagon and the building next to it, it wasn’t known whose
skeleton was inside. Then I found some ancient writers telling us that in the
year 41 B.C., Arsinoe IV – the half-sister of Cleopatra – was murdered in
Ephesus by Cleopatra and her Roman lover, Marc Antony. Because the building is
dated by its type and decoration to the second half of the first century B.C.,
this fits quite well.
“I put the pieces of the
puzzle together.”
The
eight-sided clues
“In antiquity, ordinary
people were not buried within the city. That privilege was only for special
people – those with an aristocratic background, or people who did special
things for their city. So the body must have belonged to a special person.
Also, the skeleton was of a woman.
“Then there is the shape of
the building. While The Octagon exists only as ruins today, its pieces have
been photographed. The images were digitized and ‘virtually rebuilt’ on a
computer. The shape of the building, an imperial grave monument, resembles the
famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The lighthouse, destroyed centuries ago, was built at Alexandria, on the
Egyptian coast, by the Ptolemy dynasty from which Cleopatra and Arsinoe IV were
descended.
“The center portion of the
lighthouse tower was octagonal, which was quite unusual at the time.”
Forensic
evidence
“The site of The Octagon has
a grave chamber. It was opened in 1926, but the opening was very small, and no one
entered it until later on.
“The skull had been removed
for tests; it disappeared in Germany during World War II. But there are photos
of the skull, and notes written down by those who examined it.
“In 1985 the back side of
the chamber became accessible and I re-found the skeleton – the bones were in
two niches. The body was removed and examined. The bones were found to be those
of a woman younger than 20 – 15 or 16, perhaps.
“The revised age was used
for arguments against my theory of the body belonging to Arsinoe IV, but those
arguments didn’t find anything to disprove my theory.
“This academic questioning
is normal. It happens. It’s a kind of jealousy.”
What
would prove her theory
“They tried to make a DNA
test, but testing didn’t work well because the skeleton had been moved and the
bones had been held by a lot of people. It didn’t bring the results we hoped to
find.
“I don’t know if there are
possibilities to do more of this testing. Forensic material is not my field.
“One of my colleagues on the
project told me two years ago there currently is no other method to really
determine more. But he thinks there may be new methods developing. There is
hope.”
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