Iliad Fragment Accompanied Egyptian Mummy

At the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, archaeologists uncovered a roughly 1,600-year-old Roman-era mummy with a bundled papyrus deliberately placed on its abdomen during embalming. The fragment contained part of the "Catalogue of Ships" from Book II of Homer's Iliad, which lists the Greek forces assembled for the Trojan War. Although archaeologists had previously found Greek papyri in similar positions, those contained magical or ritual texts. Researchers called this the first known case of a Greek literary work being deliberately incorporated into mummification.

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