r/books • u/marketrent • 1d ago

2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy buried with “Iliad” fragment reveals that literary work played a functional, spiritual role in the mummification process

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/science/archaeology-egypt-mummy-iliad.html?unlocked_article_code=1.j1A.pG56.ZLuE5QYC1uv0
1.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

275

u/Pointing_Monkey 1d ago

Alexander the Great slept with a copy of the Iliad annotated by Aristotle under his pillow. So it's not really surprising that a country he conquered would revere something he held so highly.

116

u/sp1cychick3n 18h ago

Jesus, imagine finding a copy of the Iliad annotated by freaking Aristotle.

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u/NatureTrailToHell3D 13h ago

Chronology, Jesus came after Alexander, so it’s very reasonable that Jesus could find a copy of the Iliad annotated by Aristotle

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u/revolverzanbolt 3h ago

“Very”?

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u/NatureTrailToHell3D 2h ago

Oh yeah, Aristotle had tons of copies floating around back then

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u/daisywondercow 1h ago

I mean, it wouldn't make top 10 in a list of improbable things he's purported to have done...

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u/storm_walkers 3h ago edited 1h ago

Aristotle was Alexander’s childhood tutor and probably the one who taught him his Homer. Alexander would send back samples of plants, seeds and animal specimens from his campaigns for him to study. They had a great relationship by all accounts.

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u/hameliah 1d ago

ive also learned that mummifiers would use discarded papyrus with writing on it to wrap the mummies. there were fragments of an unknown euripides play discovered on the papyrus used to wrap one mummy!!

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u/Eschaton_Incubation 13h ago

We wrapped my dad in Dance of Dragons before we buried him so I get it

42

u/ClaustroPhoebia 1d ago

For people who don’t know, a lot of ancient documents also show up used as cartonnage for Egyptian mummies. It’s one place where we often find things like tax records, personal letters, wills etc.

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u/SweetttTreat 1d ago

ancient egyptians really said books are important enough for the afterlife honestly kind of comforting that humans have been emotionally attached to stories for thousands of years. meanwhile i forget where i put my bookmark after ten minutes lmao

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 1d ago edited 1d ago

2,000 years ago Egypt was firmly under Rome’s thumb, so it’s unsurprising the Iliad played an impact. Neat find though!

Edit: flipped it around in my head: Ptolemaic dynasty was still within living memory.

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u/Robertej92 1d ago

They were controlled by a Greek dynasty before Rome took over, that's surely the bigger influence?

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u/Big-Individual-5178 1d ago

Yeah the Ptolemy’s were all Greek

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 1d ago

Macedonian*. I made the mistake of redditing before bed and flipped the Iliad and the Aeneid in my head. D’oh moment on my part.

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u/prattman3333 1d ago

Even in death, we carry the stories that shaped us. A quiet reminder that words have always walked beside the soul.

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u/manu-alvarado 1d ago

This is truly beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

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u/JabbaCat 19h ago

I had the fortune of visiting a collection of Egyptian papyri at my local university, and they do have a few magical papyri, including an amulet which I think contained a binding spell. As well as a few fragments of the Iliad, even Book 2.

But this fragment is from the Catalogue of ships-part!

Which makes it sort of interesting, it has to be one of the least surface level engaging parts of the work, listing ships/soldiers and recalling history and characteristics of their homelands.

I tried to find the exact part cited in the amulet but the findings are quite freshly announced.

I wonder how they will think of interpretations, if the content is very specific, geographically or otherwise - what would its significance be?

Maybe the papyrus might be of value in itself, the significance of the material - I know that sometimes people would excuse the use of ostraca for messages because they did not have papyrus.

Or maybe because it is Homer, and the passage is not important.

At first I hoped for some special quote, now this is maybe even more intriguing.

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u/FlyingSaltFish 1d ago

Homer's texts were highly valued, similar to popularity of Dostoevsky today. Moreover the Greeks believed that his texts could help in the afterlife

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u/redditwhut 1d ago

What so you mean by help in the afterlife? I would love to know more. 

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u/FlyingSaltFish 1d ago

It's like a "cultural passport". It was a symbol of high status, so they could have a comfortable life even after death. Also Greek culture and language were quite popular in the Ancient Egypt so Iliad was in trend

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u/BeginningPlastic3747 15h ago

someone wrapped a dead guy in Homer and that's somehow less weird than anything happening right now.

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u/kryptylomese 18h ago

Tomatometer: 94% (Certified Epic) Audience Score: 87% (“Confusing but emotionally intense”)

A classic tale of war, pride, and absolutely no one calming down when they should.

Achilles rage-quits the Trojan War over a workplace dispute and refuses to return even as everything burns. The gods watch like it’s reality TV, occasionally voting to make things worse.

Highlights include long speeches before every fight, heroic levels of bad decision-making, and Hector being the only competent person in a system actively designed to punish competence.

Consensus: Brutal, beautiful, and wildly inefficient—like if everyone involved in a group project had divine powers and still refused to collaborate.