Archaeologists from the University of Barcelona have identified a papyrus fragment from Homer’s Iliad placed directly on the abdomen of a Roman-period mummy buried at Oxyrhynchus, the ancient Egyptian site also known as Al-Bahnasa. The text, drawn from the Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the epic, was deliberately incorporated during the embalming process, making it the first known instance of a Greek literary passage used as part of mummification. The roughly 1,600-year-old find, excavated from Tomb 65 in Sector 22, raises pointed questions about how Greek epic poetry functioned within Egyptian funerary beliefs long after Homer composed his verses.
Greek poetry inside an Egyptian burial rite
The discovery happened during the November to December 2025 excavation campaign at Oxyrhynchus, a site that has produced tens of thousands of papyrus fragments since the late 19th century. But this find stands apart. Rather than turning up in a trash heap or a storage jar, the papyrus sat on the mummy’s abdomen as a ritual object, positioned there by embalmers who chose it for a purpose that scholars are still working to explain.
Interdisciplinary analysis conducted in January and February 2026 confirmed the identification. According to the University of Barcelona’s philology faculty, the researcher Mascia first read the Greek text on the papyrus, and the linguist Adiego then linked the passage to Book II of the Iliad, specifically the Catalogue of Ships. That section of Homer’s epic is essentially a long roster of the Greek forces that sailed to Troy, listing their leaders, home cities, and the number of vessels each contingent brought. It is one of the most structured and list-heavy passages in all of ancient literature.
The mission’s own characterization of the find is direct. The archaeological team stated that this is the first time a Greek literary text has been found deliberately used in the mummification process. Papyri have appeared alongside mummies before, often as cartonnage or recycled packing material. What sets this case apart is the intentional placement of a specific literary passage as part of the embalming ritual itself, not as structural filler but as a chosen text with apparent symbolic weight.
The papyrus itself was fragile but legible enough for epigraphers to recognize Homeric verse. Its location on the abdomen, rather than under wrappings at the head or feet, suggests that it was inserted at a relatively late stage in the embalming sequence, when the body was already bandaged. That choice of placement could reflect a belief that the written word, resting over the vital organs that had been removed and ritually treated, helped safeguard the integrity of the person in the journey to the afterlife.
Why the Catalogue of Ships matters for burial symbolism
The selection of this particular passage is not random, and it opens a line of inquiry that could reshape how scholars interpret cultural exchange in late Roman Egypt. The Catalogue of Ships is not a battle scene or a speech by a hero. It is a list of origins and departures, a record of where warriors came from and the journeys they undertook. For embalmers preparing a body for the afterlife, a passage organized around geographic origins and collective voyages could have carried specific ritual meaning, perhaps evoking the deceased’s own transition from one state of existence to another.
This hypothesis is testable. Oxyrhynchus has yielded enormous quantities of papyri over more than a century of excavation, and many fragments recovered from tombs have never been fully catalogued or cross-referenced with their archaeological context. A targeted re-examination of papyri from other Roman-period burials at the site could reveal whether embalmers consistently selected passages with thematic links to journeys, departures, or lists of names and places. If the Catalogue of Ships is not an isolated case but part of a broader pattern, it would suggest that Greek literary texts served a specific and deliberate function within Egyptian funerary theology during the Roman period.
The cultural context supports the plausibility of this reading. By the time this mummy was prepared, roughly the 4th or 5th century CE, Greek had been a dominant administrative and literary language in Egypt for centuries. Homer’s works circulated widely in Egyptian schools and elite households. The blending of Greek literary culture with Egyptian religious practice was not unusual in daily life, but finding that blend embedded in the most sacred of Egyptian rituals, the preparation of the dead, adds a new dimension to the evidence.
It is also significant that the text comes from a canonical author rather than a minor poet or a purely technical treatise. The prestige of Homer in late antiquity may have enhanced the perceived potency of his verses. Just as Egyptian funerary texts drew power from tradition and repetition, a Homeric passage could have been thought to carry authority simply because it belonged to the most revered corpus of Greek epic.
What the Oxyrhynchus mummy still cannot tell us
Several significant gaps remain in the public record of this discovery. The institutional releases from the University of Barcelona’s news service do not provide the mummy’s age at death, sex, or physical condition. Without that information, it is impossible to know whether the person buried in Tomb 65 was part of a Greek-speaking elite, an Egyptian who had adopted Greek cultural markers, or someone whose identity complicates both categories. The social status of the deceased would significantly affect how scholars interpret the choice of text.
The exact lines from the Catalogue of Ships have not been specified in any public announcement. The passage spans roughly 250 lines in the original Greek, and knowing which specific section appeared on the papyrus would help scholars assess whether the embalmers selected for content, for length, or simply used whatever fragment was available. A fragment listing Boeotian ships would carry different symbolic weight than one naming contingents from the islands or from more distant regions of the Greek world. Until the line numbers are released in a formal publication, interpretations of the text’s funerary meaning will remain provisional.
There are also unanswered questions about the broader assemblage of the tomb. The available reports do not detail the presence or absence of traditional Egyptian funerary items such as amulets, shabti figurines, or painted coffins. If the burial combined a Homeric papyrus with explicitly Egyptian iconography, that would point toward a fully hybrid ritual program. If, by contrast, the grave goods skewed heavily toward Greek or Roman styles, the papyrus might reflect a more narrowly Hellenized identity.
Another open issue concerns how typical this practice might have been. The team’s statement that this is the first documented case of a Greek literary text deliberately used in mummification does not necessarily mean it was unique in antiquity. It may simply be the first instance preserved well enough, and recorded carefully enough, to be recognized. Many earlier excavations at Oxyrhynchus and other sites did not systematically note the exact position of papyri in relation to human remains, leaving a gap in the comparative record.
A window into religious and cultural entanglement
Even with these uncertainties, the find offers a rare, concrete glimpse of how literary culture and religious practice intertwined in late Roman Egypt. It suggests that for at least some communities, Greek texts were not confined to classrooms, theaters, or private libraries. They could be woven directly into the rituals that structured the passage from life to death.
For historians of religion, this complicates older models that treated Egyptian and Greek beliefs as parallel systems that merely coexisted. The Oxyrhynchus mummy points instead to a more entangled reality, in which a single burial could activate Egyptian notions of the afterlife while simultaneously invoking a Greek epic about war and travel. The Catalogue of Ships, recited for centuries as a school exercise, here becomes a kind of talismanic itinerary for a soul leaving the world of the living.
Future work at Oxyrhynchus will determine how far this interpretation can be pushed. Detailed publication of the papyrus, the mummy, and the tomb context will allow other scholars to test alternative readings, from the possibility of simple reuse of a convenient scrap to more elaborate theories about personalized funerary scripts. Whatever the outcome, the fragment from Homer’s Iliad resting on a Roman-era abdomen has already expanded the known range of what a text could be in antiquity: not just a vehicle for stories and education, but an object with ritual force at the threshold between this life and the next.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
