Archaeologists from the University of Barcelona recovered a papyrus fragment bearing lines from Homer’s Iliad directly from the body of a Roman-era mummy during excavations at the ancient Egyptian site of Oxyrhynchus. The fragment, containing text from Book II of the Iliad, the section known as the “Catalogue of Ships,” was found placed on the abdomen of the mummy inside Tomb 65, Sector 22, at Al-Bahnasa. The discovery, made during the November to December 2025 field season, offers rare physical evidence that Greek literary texts played an active role in Egyptian burial rituals under Roman rule.
Why a Homeric burial text at Oxyrhynchus demands attention
Oxyrhynchus has long been the single richest source of ancient papyri in the world, but the vast majority of those texts were recovered from trash heaps, not from controlled funerary contexts. Finding a specific passage of the Iliad deliberately positioned on a mummy’s abdomen changes the interpretive frame. This was not a discarded school exercise or a recycled sheet of scrap. The placement, described by the excavating team as part of the embalming process, suggests the text carried ritual or protective meaning for whoever prepared the body.
The passage chosen is itself significant. Book II of the Iliad contains the “Catalogue of Ships,” a long enumeration of Greek cities, leaders, and military contingents that sailed to Troy. One working hypothesis holds that this particular section may have been selected because its roster of named Greek communities and commanders reflected the administrative or ancestral identity claims of the deceased’s family. If that connection is real, it could be tested by cross-referencing the names and origins recorded in other Oxyrhynchus tombs that contain literary papyri. No such systematic comparison has been published, but the specificity of the text choice, a genealogical and geographic list rather than a battle scene or speech, invites that line of inquiry.
The fragment also contributes to debates about how deeply Homeric poetry penetrated daily life in Roman Egypt. Literary papyri from Oxyrhynchus have long shown that Homer was copied in schools and read by elites, yet their origin in rubbish dumps has made it difficult to link them to concrete ritual practices. In contrast, a papyrus intentionally incorporated into mummification represents a purposeful act, not casual discard. It hints that Homeric verses could function as a kind of cultural amulet, conferring prestige or imagined protection in death just as they signaled education and status in life.
Tomb 65 and the IPOA mission’s field evidence
The excavation was carried out by the University of Barcelona’s archaeological mission during its November to December 2025 campaign. The team operates under the university’s Institut del Pròxim Orient Antic, known by its Catalan acronym IPOA, which oversees long-term work at Oxyrhynchus. According to the university’s official summary, the mummy was found in Tomb 65 within Sector 22 of the Al-Bahnasa site, the modern name for ancient Oxyrhynchus, located roughly 160 kilometers south of Cairo in Egypt’s Minya Governorate.
The institutional account describes the papyrus as having been placed on the mummy’s abdomen, a detail that distinguishes it from loose fragments found elsewhere in burial chambers. A faculty-level announcement from the IPOA research unit, issued through the university’s philology and communication portal, confirms the same placement, reinforcing that the papyrus was part of the wrapping or preparation of the body rather than a stray artifact within the tomb fill. Together, these reports frame the fragment as integral to the funerary assemblage.
The mummy itself dates broadly to the Roman period of Egyptian history, which spans from the late first century BCE through the fourth century CE. No narrower date range has been released, and the mission has not yet published a full stratigraphic or typological analysis of the tomb goods that might refine the chronology. The body was reportedly preserved with typical Roman-era techniques, using linen wrappings and resinous substances, but detailed conservation notes have not been made public.
The archaeological mission identified the text as Iliad Book II through visual analysis of the Greek script and comparison with known versions of the poem. A brief English-language account on Phys.org echoes the university’s description, noting that the lines correspond to the “Catalogue of Ships” and emphasizing the rarity of such a find in a sealed burial context. So far, there has been no public statement describing multispectral imaging, ink composition testing, or radiocarbon dating that would independently confirm the fragment’s age and authenticity beyond paleographic grounds.
Similarly, no osteological report has been released identifying the mummy’s age, sex, or social status. Those data points would help explain why this particular text was selected for burial and whether the individual belonged to Oxyrhynchus’s Greek-speaking elite or to a more mixed local milieu. Without them, interpretations must remain cautious and provisional.
Gaps in the record and what to watch next
Several questions remain open. The most pressing is the exact relationship between the papyrus and the body. Early secondary coverage used the phrase “inside” the mummy, while the university’s own institutional releases specify placement “on the abdomen.” That distinction matters: a text inserted into the body cavity during evisceration implies a different stage of ritual preparation than a sheet laid over the skin or wrapped into linen bandages. No field notes, conservation photographs, or detailed excavation reports have been made publicly available to resolve the discrepancy, leaving outside observers dependent on brief summaries.
The identity of the deceased is another blank. Without a name, profession, or family affiliation attached to the burial, the hypothesis linking the “Catalogue of Ships” to ancestral or civic claims remains untestable for this specific case. Oxyrhynchus was a Greek-speaking administrative center during Roman rule, and its residents included both ethnic Greeks and Hellenized Egyptians. Whether the person buried in Tomb 65 belonged to a family that traced its lineage to a Greek city named in Homer’s catalogue, or whether the text served a more generic protective function, cannot be determined from what has been disclosed so far.
The broader pattern of literary papyri in Egyptian burials is also poorly mapped. Scholars have documented cases of Book of the Dead excerpts, Demotic ritual texts, and occasional Greek literary fragments appearing in tombs from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, but systematic catalogues remain incomplete. The Oxyrhynchus find underscores the need to distinguish between papyri introduced as part of ritual practice and those that entered tombs incidentally, for example as reused packing material or as debris washed in over time. Establishing that distinction requires meticulous recording of findspots and orientations, details that are not yet available for Tomb 65 beyond the summary statements.
Future publications from the IPOA mission will therefore be crucial. A full archaeological report could clarify the tomb’s architecture, the assemblage of grave goods, and any inscriptions or markers that might link the burial to known families or civic offices in Oxyrhynchus. High-resolution images and a diplomatic transcription of the papyrus would allow papyrologists to assess the text’s variant readings, which in turn could reveal whether the fragment derives from a school copy, a luxury manuscript, or a more utilitarian roll. Each scenario would carry different implications for how and why the text ended up in a funerary context.
For now, the Iliad fragment from Tomb 65 stands as a tantalizing piece of evidence for the entanglement of Greek literary culture and Egyptian mortuary practice under Roman rule. It confirms that Homer was not only read, copied, and discarded in Oxyrhynchus but could also be woven-literally and symbolically-into the final rites of an individual inhabitant. As additional data emerge from the ongoing mission, this single papyrus may help anchor a broader reassessment of how classical texts functioned at the intersection of identity, religion, and death in one of antiquity’s most text-rich cities.
More from Morning Overview
*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
