A team from the University of Barcelona has made a significant discovery at the ancient site of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, uncovering a 1,600-year-old papyrus fragment of Homer’s Iliad within a Roman-era mummy. According to reports from the Qazinform News Agency, the discovery occurred in Tomb 65 near the modern town of Al Bahnasa during excavations conducted in late 2025.
The papyrus, which had been carefully bundled and sealed, was placed on the abdomen of the mummy. Researchers identified the text as a portion of the “Catalogue of Ships” from Book II of the Iliad, which details the Greek forces involved in the Trojan War. Project director Ignasi-Xavier Adiego noted that while Greek papyri have been found in funerary contexts before, they were almost exclusively magical or ritualistic in nature.
“The real novelty is finding a literary papyrus in a funerary context,” Adiego stated. This finding offers new evidence regarding the integration of Greek literary culture into Egyptian burial traditions during the Roman period. Oxyrhynchus, located approximately 190 kilometers south of Cairo, remains one of the most prolific sources of ancient papyri, having yielded thousands of administrative and literary texts since the late 19th century.