Iliad Excerpt Found Inside Ancient Egyptian Mummy

The idea that a good book stays with you has taken on a whole new meaning in Egypt. Archaeologists excavating a Roman-era necropolis at Al Bahnasa, site of ancient Oxyrhynchus south of Cairo, say they found a papyrus sheet tucked inside the abdomen of a mummy, bearing lines from The Iliad, Homer's epic poem about the Trojan War—a literary classic today as much as it was some 1,600 years ago when the adult male died. The sheet with lines from Book II, detailing the Greek ships that sailed to war after Spartan queen Helen was taken to Troy, would have been placed by embalmers as a form of protection, per Live Science.

Other papyri have been found inside mummies at the site, but these contained mainly magical or ritual texts, not literature, says Ignasi-Xavier Adiego of the University of Barcelona, per Scientific American. Indeed, "it is the first time in the history of archaeology that a Greek literary text has been found deliberately incorporated into the mummification process," the university says in a statement. It's still unclear why ancient Egyptians thought the text would protect the dead. Other mummies found at Oxyrhynchus during the same November-December excavation had gold tongues, which were thought to help the dead communicate with the gods, since ancient Egyptians considered gold to be the flesh of the gods.