1 She got angry. She got indignant. She dismissed her detractors. But in the end, the woman who claimed to have unearthed Alexander the Great's tomb near a remote oasis failed to convince the skeptics.
2 'She's a dreamer,' an Egyptian history professor said at a conference Thursday between Liana Souvaltzi and archaeologists.
3 'Anecdotes,' said another. 'Have you proof?' a colleague shouted.
4 It was Souvaltzi's first public meeting since she captured the world's attention by announcing last month that she had indeed discovered the Greek conqueror's resting place on a windswept hill near the Libyan border.
5 The find was met with amazement -- and criticism. A team dispatched by the Greek government said it found no evidence to support her claim and even doubted whether the building was a tomb. But its visit to the Siwa oasis was brief, and it acknowledged more time was needed to study the artifacts.
6 Souvaltzi appeared to take the criticism in stride.
7 'Of course, I can see friends and I can see rivals among you,' she told about 25 Egyptian archaeologists. 'But this doesn't make me feel any fear or any hesitation, and I'll be glad to say once more that the tomb that was discovered . belongs to Alexander the Great and nobody else.'
8 'The whole world is celebrating because this is the biggest discovery in the history of archaeological discoveries in this century,' she said.
9 She cited her evidence: a tablet written by Alexander's lieutenant in Egypt, Ptolemy, who says he brought the body to Siwa, the building's Macedonian style, engraved leaves unique to Greek architecture, and an eight-pointed star that is the symbol of Alexander.
10 She read the inscriptions in Greek and then translated them into English and argued with the archaeologists over the meaning of individual words.
11 Then she fired a broadside at her doubters, asking how they could make a decision after a few hours when she had been digging there since 1989. She admitted, however, she was not ready to present the finding scientifically.
12 'And now if you like to kill me, kill me,' she said.
13 'We are not killing you, but you have just killed our time,' Sayed el-Nassery, the head of Cairo University's history department, said later.
14 After a sharp exchange, he asked, 'What is your reference that Alexander has been buried in Siwa. Have you proof? Because we have sources, Roman sources, Greek sources, we have eyewitnesses. Have you an eyewitness?'
15 'Yes, the tomb itself,' Souvaltzi answered.
16 'No, I'm sorry,' said el-Nassery. 'It's not a tomb, it's a temple.'
17 The back and forth drew smiles from some in the audience. And it did little to quiet the skeptics. The kinder words were from those who said they would wait to pass judgment until they saw more translations of the tablets.
18 Others said they were surprised she would make such an announcement before better supporting her case.
19 'It was very puzzling,' said Ali Hassan, head of Egyptology at the Egyptian Antiquities Organization. 'To declare it 100 percent, a good archaeologist would never say that.'
20 The dispute will not end soon. The Egyptian government said it would send a team to the oasis within a week to have a look. Souvaltzi has said she will resume digging in March after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
21 'Very soon Alexander will be in front of us and in front of all those who don't believe,' she promised the archaeologists.

It was Souvaltzi ' s first public meeting since she captured the world ' s attention by announcing last month that she had indeed discovered the Greek conqueror ' s resting place on a windswept hill near the Libyan border .
resting place
Where is the location?