From Egyptian Tomb, an Ancient Poem of Grief

Archaeologists say a desert oasis in Egypt has yielded a remarkably personal relic from 1,700 years ago. At Bir al-Shughala in Egypt's New Valley, researchers uncovered a limestone tomb with a pyramid-shaped roof, built for a husband and wife and dating to the Roman era, when Constantine the Great ruled. As Live Science reports, carved into a stone plaque is a 19-line Greek poem believed to be a son's lament for his father, Pisechtes, possibly a judge.

A classics scholar calls it a sophisticated, original epigram with Homer-like grammar. The poem praises the dead as an "advisor in life" before pleading, "Listen, father!" and asking him to receive his children's offerings. Hieroglyphic texts around the tomb's entrance invoke protective spells, while an "exceptionally rare funerary scene" references the sun god's journey through the underworld, per Heritage Daily. The team also found an offering table, pottery, a coin of Constantine, and evidence the tomb was later reused.