🌅 Homer’s Iliad Was Found Inside an Egyptian Mummy

SOURCE

University of Barcelona

WHAT TO KNOW

• Archaeologists at the University of Barcelona in Spain recently presented a discovery unlike anything seen before: a 1,600-year-old mummy deliberately buried with a fragment of Homer’s Iliad on its abdomen to protect the deceased in the afterlife. The researchers say the discovery represents the first archaeological evidence of a Greek literary text being intentionally incorporated into the mummification process, and the first time Homer’s Iliad has been found inside a mummy. The fragment was part of a famous passage called the “Catalogue of Ships,” which details the various naval elements used in the Greek siege of Troy.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Homer’s Iliad is an epic poem focusing on a short period during the final year of the 10-year Trojan War, when the Greek hero Achilles withdraws from battle after Agamemnon, the leading Greek prince during the war, confiscates Achilles’s captive princess, Briseis. After Achilles withdraws, the Greeks suffer heavy losses at the hand of Trojan Prince Hector, who kills Achilles’s friend Patroclus, spurring Achilles to rejoin the war. Achilles eventually kills Hector and mutilates his body. The story ends with the ransom of Hector’s body by his father Trojan King Priam, who snuck into Achilles’s camp at night to beg for the return of his son’s corpse. Achilles is moved to empathy and surrenders Hector’s body, and the epic ends with Hector’s funeral.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The Iliad is often considered the world’s first work of European literature, and Homer followed it up with another epic, the Odyssey, which picks up after the Trojan War and follows Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, on his ten-year journey home. This past weekend, director Christopher Nolan’s action epic the The Odyssey, based on Homer's poem, hit theaters, bringing in $124.5 million in its debut weekend, making it the third largest domestic opening of the year behind Toy Story 5 ($159 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131 million). The film also brought in another $139.6 million globally, bringing its worldwide debut box office to $264.1 million.