Archaeologists from the University of Barcelona have recovered a fragment of Homer's Iliad from inside a Roman-era mummy at the ancient Egyptian site of Oxyrhynchus. The discovery reveals how a foundational text of Western civilisation found its way into the rituals of death some 1,600 years ago.
The papyrus, placed deliberately on the abdomen of the deceased, carries verses from Book II of the Iliad. Known as the Catalogue of Ships, this section lists the Greek forces that sailed for Troy. Its presence in Tomb 65 of Sector 22 in the Al Bahnasa necropolis represents something new.
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. Furthermore, it is worth noting that, since the late 19th century, a huge number of papyri have been discovered at Oxyrhynchus, including Greek literary texts of great importance, but the real novelty is finding a literary papyrus in a funerary context.
Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, the philologist who identified the text, spoke those words in the university's announcement. Previous Greek papyri recovered from mummies at the site had contained spells and invocations. This piece stands apart.
The find came during an excavation campaign run in November and December 2025, with conservation and study continuing into the early months of 2026. The University of Barcelona made the discovery public on 20 April 2026. A summary appeared on ScienceDaily on 15 July.
Oxyrhynchus has yielded thousands of papyri since the late nineteenth century. Most held administrative records, religious writings or literary excerpts. None until now had shown a classical literary work deliberately folded into the embalming process itself. The practice points to a deeper respect for the power of these stories among the Greek-speaking population of Roman Egypt.
The Iliad forms one of the cornerstones of European literary tradition. Its verses shaped ideas of heroism, duty and collective memory for more than two and a half millennia. Seeing its words preserved not in a library but within the preserved body of an individual underscores the text's enduring authority. Classical works were not merely read. In this case they accompanied the dead.
