Archaeologists have discovered a fragment of Homer's *Iliad* in an Egyptian mummy — Ancient Origins
A Spanish archaeological mission, which has been conducting excavations in the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus in the province of Minya for several years, has uncovered unique artifacts from the Roman period.
Ancient Origins reports on this.
While studying a necropolis dating from the 1st–3rd centuries CE, scientists came across mummies, one of which contained a fragment of papyrus with text from Homer’s legendary poem.
The most striking find was an excerpt from the second book of the “Iliad”—the so-called “Catalogue of Ships.”
This text provides a detailed list of the Achaean military contingents, their commanders, and the number of ships that participated in the campaign against Troy.
The placement of a literary work directly inside a mummy is an extremely rare phenomenon in archaeology.
Although Egypt was already a province of the Roman Empire at that time, its cultural elite continued to use the Greek language, a legacy of the era of Alexander the Great.
Homer was the foundation of ancient education, so the presence of such a scroll in a burial was considered a symbol of high social status.
It was believed that taking the “Iliad” with one to the afterlife was a way to demonstrate one’s erudition and important place in society to the gods.
In addition to the papyrus, researchers discovered three gold and one copper plate, each shaped like a tongue.
These objects were placed in the mouths of the mummies, which was a characteristic ritual practice in Greco-Roman Egypt at the time.
According to beliefs, such artificial tongues were meant to ensure the deceased’s ability to speak and communicate freely with the gods in the afterlife.
Currently, scientists are continuing to study the findings, but detailed photographs of the papyrus text itself have not yet been released to the general public.
Scientists have presented a new hypothesis regarding the construction of the Pyramid of Cheops
Recently, at the Grand Egyptian Museum, staff began assembling an ancient wooden boat that belonged to Pharaoh Cheops in front of the public.
As a reminder, in Egypt near the city of Luxor, a joint Egyptian-British mission identified the ancient tomb of King Thutmose II. This was the first discovery of a pharaoh’s tomb in over 100 years.
Last November, archaeologists made a sensational discovery in the necropolis of the ancient Egyptian city of Asyut. In the tomb of the powerful official Jefhehapi I, a secret chamber was discovered where his daughter, the priestess Idi, was buried.
We previously reported that during excavations in Kerman Province in southeastern Iran, archaeologists discovered a case for dark red lipstick dating back to the Bronze Age.
