Passage from Homer’s Iliad found within the stomach of a Roman-era Egyptian mummy

A passage from Homer’s Iliad has been found contained in the stomach of a Roman-era Egyptian mummy

By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron

It’s not extraordinary for somebody to like a e book a lot that they ask to be buried with a duplicate of it. However a mummy entombed in an Egyptian necropolis takes that sentiment to the intense.

Researchers found the mother at a funerary complicated positioned south of Cairo, in Al Bahnasa, the modern-day location of the traditional Greco-Roman metropolis of Oxyrhynchus, throughout an excavation in late 2025. Upon examination, the crew revealed a sheet of papyrus inside the mother’s stomach that contained textual content from the Iliad, the traditional Greek poet Homer’s epic account of the siege of Troy.

The passage is from Guide II of the epic poem, during which Homer cataloged the Greek ships that got here to do battle with Troy after Helen, the queen of Sparta and a daughter of Zeus, was taken there by Paris, the son of the king of Troy.

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The researchers beforehand discovered scrolls in a few of the different mummies interred inside three limestone chambers at Al Bahnasa, all of which date to the period of Roman rule over Egypt, which started in 30 B.C.E. and ended round C.E. 640. The newly examined mummy’s tomb dates to about 1,600 years in the past, in accordance with the researchers. Not one of the scrolls found inside different mummies on the website, nevertheless, contained any references to the Iliad, which might have already been thought-about a literary basic at the moment.

“This isn’t the primary time now we have discovered Greek papyri, bundled, sealed, and integrated into the mummification course of, however till now, their content material was primarily magical,” mentioned Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, a professor of classical, Romance and Semitic languages on the College of Barcelona in an announcement. Others contained ritualistic content material.

“It’s price noting that, because the late nineteenth century, an enormous variety of papyri have been found at Oxyrhynchus, together with Greek literary texts of nice significance, however the actual novelty is discovering a literary papyrus in a funerary context,” he added.

The excavation was a part of the College of Barcelona’s Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission, which launched in 1992.

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