This could have been a bedtime story for the ages.
In an astonishing discovery, archaeologists unearthed a portion of Homer’s “The Iliad” tucked inside the abdomen of a 1,600-year-old mummy. Experts are calling this a groundbreaking find.
A team from the University of Barcelona made this discovery while excavating a tomb in Egypt dating back to the Roman Empire. Within the tomb, they found a papyrus fragment inscribed with Greek text.
The fragment belongs to Book Two of the epic poem, which vividly recounts the events of the legendary Trojan War, according to a statement from the university.
Intriguingly, the fragment contains the renowned catalog of ships that took part in the assault on Troy. Researchers suggest it was likely placed inside the mummy during the embalming process.
Announced earlier this month, this discovery occurred during an excavation conducted by university researchers between November and December 2025. Remarkably, it marks the first time in recorded history that a Greek literary work has been found as part of a mummification ritual, scientists noted.
The University of Barcelona’s Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission had previously documented Greek papyri tucked inside mummies in similar positions, but the text was always magical or ritualistic, according to researchers.
“It is worth noting that, since the late 19th century, a huge number of papyri have been discovered at Oxyrhynchus, including Greek literary texts of great importance,” said Professor Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, who helped lead the research campaign.
“But the real novelty is finding a literary papyrus in a funerary context,” Adiego added.
The male mummy was discovered inside Tomb 65 at the Al-Bahnasa necropolis, the site of ancient Oxyrhynchus, which sits roughly 190 miles south of Cairo.
The same dig also turned up three gold tongues and one copper tongue — objects placed in the mouths of the dead so they could speak to the gods in the afterlife.
Previous excavations at the cemetery had already recovered more than a dozen mummies with gold tongues, but why one received copper instead of gold remains unclear, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
