Iliad Passage Found Inside Egyptian Mummy

Why this is here: The discovered papyrus dates back approximately 1,600 years and contains text from Book II of Homer’s Iliad, a literary classic at the time of the mummy’s creation.

Researchers excavating a funerary complex near Al Bahnasa, Egypt, discovered a papyrus from Homer’s Iliad within a Roman-era mummy. The team found the scroll inside the mummy’s abdomen during a late 2025 dig at the ancient Greco-Roman city of Oxyrhynchus, south of Cairo.

The papyrus contains a section from Book II of the epic poem. This part lists the Greek ships assembled to fight at Troy after Paris took Helen to Troy. The mummy dates to roughly 1,600 years ago and was one of several found within limestone chambers.

Previous mummies at the site held papyri with magical or ritualistic texts. While many literary papyri have been found at Oxyrhynchus since the late 1800s, this marks the first literary text discovered within a funerary context. The University of Barcelona’s Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission has worked at the site since 1992, continuing to uncover details of life in Roman Egypt.