Iliad inside a mummy
- Archaeologists discovered a fragment of Homer’s Iliad hidden inside the abdomen of a Roman-era Egyptian mummy. - The remains are about 1,600 years old, and excavators also found three golden tongues plus one copper tongue. - Researchers note the find shows Greco‑Roman literary texts entered Egyptian funerary contexts, complicating assumptions about burial ritual materials ( ).
Archaeologists in Egypt found a fragment of Homer’s *Iliad* tucked into the abdomen of a Roman-era mummy, the first known literary papyrus placed inside a mummy. (web.ub.edu) The mummy came from Tomb 65 in Sector 22 at Al-Bahnasa, ancient Oxyrhynchus, during a University of Barcelona excavation campaign in November and December 2025. Researchers dated the burial to about 1,600 years ago. (web.ub.edu) Papyrologist Leah Mascia and philologist Ignasi-Xavier Adiego identified the text in early 2026 as part of Book II of the *Iliad*, the “Catalogue of Ships,” which lists the Greek forces before Troy. The papyrus had been placed on the mummy’s abdomen during embalming, the university said. (web.ub.edu) Ancient embalmers in Roman Egypt did sometimes place Greek papyri inside mummies, but earlier examples from Oxyrhynchus carried magical or ritual texts rather than literature. Adiego said the novelty here is the funerary use of a canonical Greek poem. (web.ub.edu; yahoo.com) Oxyrhynchus has produced huge numbers of Greek papyri since the late 19th century, making it one of the best-known archives of daily life and literature from Greco-Roman Egypt. This find shifts attention from what was written there to how texts were used in burial. (web.ub.edu; yahoo.com) The same excavation also uncovered several other mummies, three gold tongues, and one copper tongue placed with the dead. Egyptian officials said some bodies still had geometric wrappings, traces of gold leaf, and painted wooden coffins in a looted underground chamber. (jpost.com) Those tongue amulets fit a known funerary idea: giving the dead the power of speech in the afterlife. At Al-Bahnasa, they turned up alongside both mummified burials and cremated remains, pointing to mixed burial practices under Roman rule. (jpost.com; archaeology.org) Nearby areas of the site also yielded terracotta and bronze figures of Harpocrates and Cupid, linking Egyptian, Greek, and Roman religious imagery in the same cemetery. Officials in Egypt said the new finds add literary evidence to a burial landscape already showing cultural overlap. (jpost.com) For now, the strongest clue is placement: the *Iliad* fragment was not trash reused as stuffing but a text inserted as part of embalming. In Oxyrhynchus, a poem about war ended up serving the dead. (web.ub.edu; yahoo.com)
