An unexpected discovery… While inspecting the interior of a 1,600-year-old Egyptian mummy dating from Roman times, archaeologists found a fragment of theIliadby Homer. The text had not been placed next to the body, but inside the mummy’s abdomen itself. However, the real surprise is not only where this fragment was found. It is mainly linked to the way in which he found himself there. To understand it, we have to go back toIliad even and what this work became in the Roman world.
In theIliadpoem composed in the VIIIe century BC and attributed to Homer, the Trojan War ended neither in triumph nor in renewal. It ends in devastation. The poem ends on the brink of collapse, with Troy reduced to nothing more than a landscape of heroic ruins. And yet, the story does not end there.
According to later Roman tradition, a Trojan would have escaped the catastrophe. Aeneas, son of Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite, is said to have fled the burning city carrying his father on his shoulders and the household gods in his arms. He would then have crossed the Mediterranean towards the west, to Italy, where he would have become the ancestor of the Romans.
This suite is not included in theIliad herself. It was developed several centuries later, notably in theAeneidby Virgil (Ier century BC). But it profoundly transformed the meaning of the Trojan War. The past, in other words, was continually reorganized through narratives that were constantly rewritten, extended, and linked together across time and space.
Transforming a defeat into a founding story
For the Romans, the Trojan War was much more than a distant Greek legend. It has become a way of thinking about origins, identity and power. Claiming affiliation with Troy was not simply a matter of establishing a genealogy. This presupposed real permanent cultural work, nourished by stories, education and a shared collective memory. L’Iliad provided the raw material: characters, events, and lineages that each generation could reshape and reinterpret.
Throughout the Roman Empire, cultured elites learned Homer as part of their education. They cited it in their speeches, analyzed it in classrooms, and used it to assert their cultural authority. Know theIliadit was mastering a common language understood throughout the Empire. A senator in Rome, a professor in Asia Minor or a student in Egypt could thus refer to the same stories. The poem constituted a shared cultural framework allowing very different populations to be part of a common history.
During the Roman imperial era, the site of ancient Troy – located in present-day Turkey – became a true place of cultural pilgrimage. The emperors invested in its development, directly linking the city to the Trojan origins claimed by Rome. During the reign of Emperor Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD), Troy was integrated into the political discourse of the Empire. Then, under Hadrian (117-138), it became a central element of a culture of travel, memory and heritage.
A visitor arriving at Troy in IIe century AD discovered a carefully staged landscape. There were baths, accommodation and spaces for shows. A small theater – the Odeon – was even built directly into the ancient citadel, so that the remains of the Bronze Age city, considered the setting for the legendary battles around Troy, formed a spectacular backdrop. Visitors could walk through what was presented as the very setting of the Homeric epic, experiencing the Trojan War as a story literally rooted in the ground beneath their feet.
From Troy to Egypt
Throughout the Roman Empire, theIliad circulated like a living text: copied, taught and read. Egypt, one of Rome’s most important provinces, was no exception. But Homer was circulating in a cultural landscape very different from the Greek literary world in which the poem had seen the light of day.
For the Romans, Egypt often appeared as a territory where Antiquity was not only recounted, but also materially preserved, through its temples, its monuments and practices emphasizing continuity with the past. At the same time, it was a profoundly hybrid society, where Egyptian, Greek and Roman traditions intermingled in complex ways.
Homer was among the most copied authors in Roman Egypt: he was read and taught as a marker of education and cultural belonging, deeply integrated into daily literary life.
The simple fact that a fragment of theIliad could have ended up as filler material shows how deeply Homer was integrated into daily life in Roman Egypt.
The Homeric version of the Trojan War held a particularly prominent place among Greek-speaking elites, particularly in urban centers like Oxyrhynchus (Upper Egypt), where the mummy was discovered. Other versions of the story – giving more importance to the stay of Paris and Helen in Egypt, as reported by Herodotus from the accounts of Egyptian priests – were probably more widespread among the Egyptian population as a whole.
The first articles devoted to the discovery of the fragment found in the Egyptian mummy suggested that the text had been deliberately chosen to accompany the deceased, as an object loaded with personal meaning, perhaps linked to his upbringing or cultural identity.
The most compelling explanation, however, is perhaps the simplest. Papyri that were damaged or became unusable were often reused as cheap material. This fragment could thus have served as stuffing, grouped with other pieces then inserted into the abdominal cavity without real consideration for its literary content. But the simple fact that a fragment of theIliad could have ended up as filler material shows how deeply Homer was integrated into daily life in Roman Egypt.
A moving text
In the Roman world, giving meaning to the past meant constantly moving between stories and monuments, between genealogies and the depths of time. Each perspective shed light on the others.
L’Iliad helped shape a world where different pasts could be linked, compared and reinterpreted. By connecting stories, places and traditions across the Mediterranean, the Roman world made the past a flexible and reusable resource, capable of producing identity, authority and a sense of belonging in changing contexts.
This is precisely why theIliad mattered as much: the text circulated in very different contexts. It structured the education of the elite, but was also part of the ordinary culture of reading. In Troy, he helped transform the city into a place of cultural memory.
The text itself has also enjoyed a long material life, surviving not only as an authoritative narrative, but also through manuscripts and writing materials copied, transmitted, and even reused for entirely different purposes. Perhaps his most enduring lesson is this: the past is never simply preserved. It is constantly made and remade through the stories, practices and material objects that transport it through time.
