A 1,600-Year-Old Mummy Was Buried With a Fragment of Homer's Iliad
Archaeologists have found papyri inside mummies before. They've found magical texts, ritual documents, protective spells — all of it expected, all of it consistent with what we know about ancient Egyptian burial practices. What they had never found, until now, was literature.
A University of Barcelona team excavating the ancient necropolis of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt discovered a 1,600-year-old Roman-era mummy buried with a fragment of papyrus containing a passage from Homer's Iliad placed directly on the abdomen as part of the embalming ritual. It's the first time in the history of archaeology that a Greek literary text has been found deliberately incorporated into the mummification process.
"This is not the first time we have found Greek papyri, bundled, sealed, and incorporated into the mummification process, but until now, their content was mainly magical," said Professor Adiego of the University's Department of Classical, Romance and Semitic Languages. "The real novelty is finding a literary papyrus in a funerary context."
What the Fragment Contains
The papyrus was analyzed earlier this year by papyrologist Leah Mascia and Professor Adiego.
They identified the text as coming from the Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad — the famous passage that lists the Greek forces assembling before Troy. It's one of the most recognizable sections of one of the foundational works of Western literature, a text that has been read, copied, and studied for nearly three millennia.
Someone in Roman-era Egypt thought it important enough to bury with their dead.
Where It Was Found
The mummy was discovered in Tomb 65 of Sector 22 at the Al Bahnasa necropolis — the Egyptian site identified with ancient Oxyrhynchus, one of the most significant cities of Greco-Roman Egypt located about 190 kilometers south of Cairo along the Bahr Yussef branch of the Nile. The necropolis was in active use for over a thousand years.
Oxyrhynchus has been one of the richest archaeological sites for papyri since the late 19th century — tens of thousands of fragments have been recovered there including significant Greek literary texts. But every literary papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus before this one was found in rubbish heaps or storage contexts. Finding one inside a mummy in a burial context is entirely different.
The excavation site revealed a funerary complex with three limestone chambers containing Roman-era mummies and decorated wooden sarcophagi — many damaged by past looting. The mummy containing the Iliad fragment was found intact enough to preserve the papyrus in its original position on the abdomen.
What It Might Mean
The discovery raises questions that don't have easy answers yet. Why the Iliad? Why this passage specifically? Was the person buried here a scholar, a scribe, someone with a personal connection to the text? Did the passage hold protective meaning — the Catalogue of Ships is in some ways a kind of list, and lists carried ritual power in ancient cultures? Or was Homer simply so deeply embedded in the educated culture of Greco-Roman Egypt that his words felt appropriate to carry into death the way others carried spells?
The Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission, which has been running since 1992 under the University of Barcelona's Institute of Ancient Near East Studies, presented its findings in a series of lectures in Barcelona throughout May.
Three thousand years after Homer, someone is still being buried with his words. That's not nothing.
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