LOS ANGELES — She lived as the last ruler of ancient Egypt, but little is known about Cleopatra’s death.

For 2000 years, the location of her tomb has been a mystery with few leads, until now.

National Geographic’s documentary, “Cleopatra’s Final Secret,” reveals the incredible recent breakthroughs in the quest to locate her tomb. One crew, led by lawyer-turned-archaeologist Dr. Kathleen Martinez, made a remarkable discovery involving an underwater temple.

“After studying the life of Cleopatra from the eyes of a criminal lawyer, I thought that the royal quarters were not a place that she would choose,” Dr. Martinez tells On The Red Carpet.

The archaeologist theorizes that Cleopatra deliberately hid the whereabouts of her tomb in order to avoid it being desecrated by the Romans, who controlled the area. Others think that she’s buried in Philae in Aswan, 1,000km from Alexandria City.

She explains, “Egyptologists are thinking only about the location, but they are not thinking about other facts that (a) lawyer will consider. So I believe she, of course, she would be buried in a temple of Isis, but not that one in Philae. It had to be a temple of Isis in Alexandria. So I started making a map of ancient Alexandria, and then I found this temple, which was 45 kilometers from the royal quarters.”

The only issue?

The site is now underwater.

“I remember when I took some of the underwater departments in Alexandria to present the idea that I want to dive together with them. (…) And they look at me, and they say, ‘That’s impossible. That’s only a crazy idea that you have. But can you see with your eyes that this is an open sea?'” They pushed back.

“We have to see things how they were in that time,” she elaborates.

In order to carry out a successful mission, Dr. Martinez needed to enlist an experienced oceanographer, and who better than Dr. Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the shipwrecked Titanic?

“I didn’t know if he even will reply (to) my email, but he did. And that conversation between us changed the course of my search in a very positive way,” says Dr. Martinez.

What they found has only fueled her further.

She plans to continue excavating next week in locations both on land and at sea.

“For the first time we’re going to excavate underwater and we really don’t know (what) we can find there beside the port. But we know- what we know now is that there was an important human activity in that area. So that opens to all possibilities,” she says about their future plans.

“Cleopatra’s Final Secret” premieres tonight on National Geographic and begins streaming the next day on Hulu and Disney+.

The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of National Geographic, Hulu, Disney+ and this ABC station.