A joint Egyptian-Spanish archaeological mission working at Al-Bahnasa in Minya Governorate recovered mummies fitted with golden tongue and nail amulets from tombs dated to the Ptolemaic period. The same excavation site, known in antiquity as Oxyrhynchus, also produced a rare papyrus fragment of Homer’s Iliad placed inside a Roman-era mummy at Tomb 65. Together, the finds raise pointed questions about how long Egyptian priestly communities preserved older funerary traditions under Roman rule and whether a single local workshop or ritual network supplied these gold objects across generations of burials.
Gold Tongue Amulets and the Persistence of Ptolemaic Burial Rites
The golden tongues are small foil amulets shaped to fit over the tongue of a mummified body. In Egyptian funerary belief, a gold tongue allowed the deceased to speak before Osiris during the judgment of the dead. Gold nails served a parallel protective function, shielding the body’s extremities in the afterlife. The practice has deep roots in pharaonic tradition, but finding a concentration of these objects in tombs from the Ptolemaic era at a single necropolis is unusual enough to demand explanation.
The Egyptian antiquities ministry confirmed the recovery of the golden tongues and nails during fieldwork conducted by a team from the University of Barcelona and the Institute of the Ancient Near East. The ministry’s announcement tied the artifacts to Ptolemaic-period tombs at Al-Bahnasa, placing them in a timeframe when Greek-speaking rulers governed Egypt but local religious customs continued to shape burial practice. That these amulets appear grouped together rather than scattered across distant tombs suggests the burials may have been organized by a shared religious community or supplied by a common artisan workshop operating at the site.
A separate notice in Arabic on the ministry website likewise emphasizes the clustering of golden tongues and nails within a defined group of tombs. While the two announcements differ in language, they converge on the basic picture: a Ptolemaic necropolis in which gold foil pieces were carefully positioned on or within mummified bodies, following a standardized pattern that points to codified ritual rather than ad hoc improvisation. This repetition strengthens the case that the objects were part of a formalized set of rites that local priests or embalmers administered to select members of the community.
A doctoral thesis hosted by the University of Barcelona repository provides supporting context. The research examines the archaeological setting and Osiris cult rituals at El-Bahnasa between the 7th century BC and 2nd century AD. That span covers the transition from late pharaonic rule through the Ptolemaic dynasty and into the Roman imperial period. The thesis documents the ritual infrastructure at the site, including an Osireion linked to the worship of Osiris, the god who presided over the afterlife and before whom the golden-tongued dead were supposed to speak. The overlap between the thesis’s chronological scope and the ministry’s Ptolemaic dating of the tombs strengthens the case that these burials belonged to a sustained local tradition rather than an isolated event.
Within this framework, the golden tongues and nails can be read as material signatures of a community that saw itself as heir to older pharaonic practices even as it navigated Ptolemaic rule. The use of gold-associated with divine flesh-underscored the hope that the deceased would be reborn and able to address Osiris effectively. If a single workshop supplied the foil pieces over multiple generations, that would imply not only economic continuity but also the transmission of specialized ritual knowledge within a relatively tight circle of artisans and priests.
Homer’s Iliad in Tomb 65 and the Roman-Era Layer
The excavation produced another striking find at the same necropolis. According to a University of Barcelona news release, a papyrus containing lines from Homer’s Iliad was found inside a Roman-era mummy at Tomb 65. Oxyrhynchus has long been famous for its papyrus discoveries, but finding a Greek literary text placed with a body inside a tomb, rather than discarded in a rubbish heap, is a different kind of evidence. It points to a deliberate choice by whoever prepared the burial, blending a Greek literary artifact with Egyptian mummification practice.
This creates a chronological tension with the golden-tongue finds. The ministry’s announcements describe the gold amulets as coming from Ptolemaic-period tombs, while the Iliad papyrus was recovered from a Roman-era mummy. Both sets of discoveries come from the same necropolis at Al-Bahnasa, but they represent different phases of occupation. The question is whether the gold-tongue burials and the Roman-era mummy with the Iliad papyrus reflect a single continuous tradition or distinct burial communities separated by time. No published excavation report has yet clarified the precise stratigraphic relationship between the Ptolemaic tombs containing the golden amulets and Tomb 65.
The coexistence of these finds at one site illustrates how Al-Bahnasa functioned as a religious and cultural crossroads. Egyptian priests maintained Osiris-centered rituals while Greek literary culture circulated among the local population. The gold tongues served a purely Egyptian religious purpose. The Iliad papyrus, by contrast, reflects the tastes and identity of someone embedded in Greco-Roman literary culture. That both ended up in mummified burials at the same necropolis shows that the boundary between “Egyptian” and “Greek” practice was far more porous than neat historical categories suggest.
For the Roman-era individual in Tomb 65, the Iliad may have carried multiple layers of meaning. It could have signaled education and status, marking the deceased as part of a Hellenized elite. It might also have functioned as a protective or symbolic text, even if not originally composed for funerary use. Whatever the precise motivation, the decision to insert a Greek epic into an Egyptian-style mummy points to a world in which cultural borrowing had become routine, yet older religious frameworks-like the hope of speaking before Osiris-remained intelligible reference points.
Gaps in the Record and What Metallurgical Testing Could Reveal
Several key pieces of evidence are still missing. No primary excavation log or field report has been published detailing the exact number of mummies that carried golden tongues, the precise location of each tomb relative to Tomb 65, or the stratigraphic dating that would pin the burials to narrower windows within the broad Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Without that information, it remains difficult to say whether the same families or priestly lineages reused specific tomb clusters over centuries, or whether later burials simply exploited an already crowded necropolis.
Metallurgical analysis of the gold tongues and nails could help address some of these questions. By examining alloy composition and trace elements, researchers could determine whether the amulets were produced from a consistent source of metal or from different supplies over time. A stable signature across multiple tombs would support the idea of a single workshop or tightly coordinated group of artisans operating under priestly oversight. Variability might instead indicate that the practice of placing gold tongues was adopted by different groups at different moments, perhaps in response to shifting theological emphases or changing access to precious metals.
Microscopic study of tool marks on the foil could also reveal whether the same techniques and instruments were used across the assemblage. Repeated patterns in cutting, embossing, or shaping would again point toward continuity in workshop practice. Combined with radiocarbon dating of associated organic materials, such data might show whether the golden-tongue tradition peaked during a specific phase of Ptolemaic rule or extended well into the Roman era alongside the Iliad burial.
Textual and iconographic evidence from the broader region could further clarify how unusual Al-Bahnasa really was. If similar clusters of gold tongue amulets turn up at other sites with strong Osiris cults, the practice may have been part of a wider, coordinated religious movement. If not, Oxyrhynchus might represent a more localized experiment in fusing long-standing beliefs about speech in the afterlife with the economic and social realities of a Hellenistic and Roman provincial town.
For now, the golden tongues, gold nails, and Iliad papyrus remain tantalizing fragments of a larger story. They testify to communities that navigated foreign rule without abandoning the hope that the dead could speak effectively in the next world, even as they embraced Greek language and literature as markers of identity. Future technical studies and fuller publication of the excavation records will be crucial to determining whether these objects reflect a single, long-lived ritual system or a series of overlapping experiments in how to die-and be remembered-in a changing Egypt.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
