Homer's Iliad Inside a Mummy: A Stunning Find at Oxyrhynchus

Archaeologists from the University of Barcelona uncovered a papyrus fragment from Homer's Iliad in the Egyptian town of Al-Bahnasa — placed inside the abdomen of a 1,600-year-old Roman-era mummy. It's the first find of its kind in archaeological history, and it raises a fascinating question: why did ancient Egyptians weave Greek literature directly into the mummification process?

What was found in Tomb 65

The Spanish-Egyptian mission, led by Dr. Maite Mascort and Dr. Esther Pons Mellado of the Institute of Ancient Near East Studies (IPOA) at the University of Barcelona, worked at Oxyrhynchus — sometimes called "the city of papyri" — through November and December 2025. They only announced the discovery in mid-April 2026.

Among the mummies the team brought up from Tomb 65 in Sector 22 was one with an unusual detail: a carefully folded sheet of papyrus resting on the abdomen. Beside other bodies, the archaeologists also found three gold and one copper tongue amulets — meant to allow the deceased to speak before the tribunal of Osiris in the afterlife.

Why the "Catalogue of Ships" from the Iliad?

The text on the papyrus comes from Book Two of Homer's Iliad — the section literary scholars call the Catalogue of Ships. It's a long inventory of the Greek forces and commanders who sailed to Troy. For ancient schoolchildren this passage was textbook material, memorized line by line — the Iliad was to the Greek world what the Bible would later be to medieval Europe.

The fact that someone placed this text directly into the mummification process remains an archaeological puzzle. Not hieroglyphs. Not the Book of the Dead. But a Greek poem about the Trojan War, written in another country, in another language, several centuries before the community at Oxyrhynchus took its Roman shape.

An Egypt that was no longer purely "Egyptian"

Oxyrhynchus under Roman rule (1st–4th century AD) was a multicultural urban organism. People spoke Greek, Latin, and Egyptian. They went to gymnasiums, recited Homer, and yet buried their dead by old tradition — with amulets, mummification, and a book for the final journey.

This find captures beautifully how different worlds blended in a single tomb: a body wrapped according to ancient Egyptian rite, but with a Greek epic on its chest. As if the deceased was being equipped for two afterlives — the Egyptian one, where Osiris waits, and the Greek one, where Hades does.

And what about Prague?

In our Pharaoh's Tomb escape room you do something similar — on a smaller scale. You unravel texts, look for patterns in hieroglyphs, piece together symbols that once served someone as a map to the underworld. It's not academic archaeology, but it's the same kind of experience: standing face to face with a story no one has read for two thousand years.

When we designed the room, this was one of the main reasons — the best puzzles have a real foundation. If archaeological mysteries pull you in, take a look at our older piece on 7 mysterious facts about Tutankhamun's tomb.

Can you crack the papyrus in 90 minutes?

Mascort and Pons Mellado spent dozens of seasons at Oxyrhynchus before they came across this mummy. In Pharaoh's Tomb you have 90 minutes and a single book of puzzles to solve. Groups of two to five players, difficulty 4 out of 5, in Vinohrady.

If you'd like to know more about how we built the room and why, take a look at the About Us page. And if you want to find out what it feels like to spend a few minutes inside an archaeological legend — book a slot.