Egyptian mummy unearthed with literary text on abdomen in first ever find

Recently unearthed mummies were discovered with a literary passage from Homer on their bodies. (Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities)

Archeologists working at the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt have unearthed a mummy with a passage from Homer’s “Iliad” stuck to its abdomen, in a first-of-its-kind discovery.

While other mummies in the area have been found with sealed packages containing papyri with what appear to be ritualistic formulas placed on them as part of the embalming process, this is the first time that a literary text has been found, Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, a classical philologist at the University of Barcelona, Spain, told CNN on Thursday.

“This is the big development for us,” said Adiego, who’s part of a team that’s been working at the site for years.

“Until now, we didn’t know that they would have used literary texts as part of this funerary ritual,” he added.

The mummy was found in the modern-day Egyptian town of Al Bahnasa, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) south of the capital Cairo, and is roughly 1,600 years old, from the Roman era, according to a statement from the University of Barcelona.

Although the papyrus has fragmented and is in poor condition, the team has been able to ascertain that the text is from the catalogue of ships in Book II of the Greek epic poem, said Adiego.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to study it using high-tech methods such as X-rays, which might allow us to read it better,” he said. “We’ve done all we can without destroying the papyrus.”

As a result, research into the papyrus is at a preliminary stage, explained Adiego, with important questions still to be answered.

At this point, little is known about the role of the papyrus in the embalming process, he added, although one possible explanation is that they acted as a kind of signature of the embalmer who had mummified the body.

The discovery of what look to be ritual instructions written on other papyri had led some to theorize that they had some sort of protective function, said Adiego.“The idea that a papyrus containing a literary text would have fulfilled this same function is much stranger,” he added.

“So to this point we aren’t able to interpret the reason why there is this literary papyrus,” said Adiego.

In addition, little is known about the lives of those whose mummies have been found at the site, aside from the fact that their families must have had a certain level of wealth in order to be able to pay for the embalming process, he added.

Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said that the excavation had uncovered three limestone tombs containing several mummies, three of which had gold foil on their tongues and another that had copper on its tongue.

In a statement published on Facebook earlier this month, the ministry said that one room had a large jar containing the burned remains of an adult human, as well as the bones of an infant and the head of a feline animal. The remains were wrapped in pieces of fabric.

There was a similar jar containing the burned remains of two people and the bones of an animal of the same species in the second room, it added.