Cleopatra

Archaeologists think they may be close to locating the graves of the doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony in a temple on the Mediterranean Sea just west of Alexandria, Egypt. For years, researchers have been seeking the graves of the famed pair, celebrated in plays and movies, but all the leads have proved fruitless.

With Elizabeth Taylor firmly in mind, many movie fans hold an image of Cleopatra as a sultry siren who seduced both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony into steamy affairs. More recently, revisionist historians such as Martin Bernal have portrayed her as a Nubian queen, a black African who not only ruled over Egypt in the 1st Century BC but who also successfully confronted the mighty armies of Rome.

Tamara Dobson, the stunning Amazonian model-turned-actress best known for her leading role in two films as kung fu-fighting government super-agent Cleopatra Jones, died Monday in Baltimore from complications of pneumonia and multiple sclerosis. She was 59. A native of Baltimore, Dobson studied fashion illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art and began modeling there.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: I come to bury "Cleopatra," not to praise it. What swell trash, though. Make that docu trash. As is Sunday night's other TV biography on NBC, "The Jesse Ventura Story," which though amusing in spots is about as authentic as the pro wrestling circus that generated its palooka protagonist, whose 1998 election as Minnesota governor stunned the political establishment.

The Egyptian artisans who produced makeup for Cleopatra and other women were able to perform sophisticated chemistry that researchers had not believed possible at such an early date, according to a report in today's Nature. Scientists from the Louvre Museum and the French cosmetics company L'Oreal analyzed makeup from the tombs of the pharaohs in the period 2000 BC to 1200 BC and found that it contained chemicals that do not occur naturally.

The name Cleopatra is probably the most recognizable among all the rulers of ancient Egypt. Her story has been told on stage by Shakespeare and Shaw, and she has been immortalized on the screen by Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor. Now the Brooklyn Museum is running a knockout exhibition, "Cleopatra's Egypt: Age of the Ptolemies," which runs through Jan. 2, then travels to the Detroit Institute of Arts and on to Munich, Germany.

Renie, a film costume designer who won an Academy Award and was nominated for three others, died Tuesday in her Pacific Palisades home. She was 90 and was one of the founders of the Costume Designers Guild. Born Irene Brouillet, she came to stage and movie work after studying at the Chouinard Art Institute and UCLA. Over the years she created costumes for the Ice Follies, Walt Disney and Paramount, RKO and Twentieth Century Fox film studios, among others.

This weekend, a favorite children's program goes prime time, deep secrets of the legendary Queen of the Nile are revealed and, in a tribute to the late sports hero, HBO repeats its acclaimed 1997 documentary "Where Have You Gone Joe DiMaggio?" tonight at 7. The popular preschooler show, "Blue's Clues," gets a nighttime outing with "Blue's Big Treasure Hunt" at 7:30 p.m. Sunday on Nickelodeon.

The final weekend of May sweeps features movies starring such favorites as Angela Lansbury, Jane Seymour and Cicely Tyson, ABC's big "Cleopatra" four-hour drama and the network premiere of the blockbuster "Independence Day." Barbra Streisand and Cis Corman are the executive producers of the 1998 documentary "City at Peace," tonight at 7:30 on HBO. The 90-minute film profiles several of the 60 Washington, D.C.