With the discovery of the lost royal quarters of the Ptolemies Dynasty (to which Cleopatra belonged), believed to have been submerged following a series of earthquakes, the Egyptian supreme council of antiquities has proposed to turn the site into an underwater museum. The excavations were undertaken by a French archaeologist, Franck Goddio, who discovered the lost site after three years of underwater research. Among the discoveries from the ruins of the submerged city is a 100-year-old granite sphinx believed to depict Cleopatra's father Ptolemy I. Instead of taking the artefacts out of the water there is a proposal to build a network of underwater transparent tunnels, chief of the supreme council of antiquities Gaballa Ali Gaballa told reporters here. ``We are opening a whole new world....This isthe world's heritage,'' Gaballa said.

``It sounds crazy, but I know it is not carzy, I know it can be done,'' he said without elaborating further. Goddio's 35-member mission also discovered the royal harbour of Cape Chias and the island of Antirhodos, which housed one of Cleopatra's palaces, and the peninsula where her lover, Marc Antony, built his retreat.

Cleopatra's original palace might not even have been in existence when the royal quarters were submerged as her rule had ended centuries earlier when she and Antony committed suicide in 30 BC, Goddio said.

However, many of the artefacts date to a period when Cleopatra lived there.