Archaeologists Find 1,600-Year-Old Iliad Papyrus on Roman-Era Mummy in Egypt

7 articles · Updated · Hyperallergic · May 13

Oxyrhynchus archaeologists said a fifth-century CE papyrus carrying lines from Book II of Homer’s Iliad was found folded on a Roman-era mummy’s abdomen, one of the rare cases of Homeric text used in burial.
Leah Mascia identified the passage as the Iliad’s catalog of ships after Roman-era tomb finds uncovered in late 2025 were analyzed this year; the team said the fragment lay on top of the body, not inside it.
Scholars said the text may have been included because Homer was a standard school text, but writing in burials could also serve protective, magical, civic or divinatory purposes in Greco-Roman Egypt.
The same excavation also documented Ptolemaic tombs with 52 mummies, including 13 with gold tongues, and the team says 15 other papyri found in recent years mostly preserve Greco-Egyptian magical texts.
The find adds to evidence of varied funerary practices at Oxyrhynchus, though experts noted it is not unprecedented: an Iliad papyrus was found with a mummy at Hawara in 1888.

Was the Iliad papyrus a sacred charm for the afterlife or just discarded stuffing for a Roman-era mummy?

Beyond the famous text, what does this unique burial reveal about the person mummified with Homer's epic?