{"id":233493,"date":"2026-05-17T04:06:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T02:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/north-africa\/egypt\/egypt-why-was-an-egyptian-mummy-stuffed-with-a-fragment-of-homers-iliad\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T04:06:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T02:06:34","slug":"egypt-why-was-an-egyptian-mummy-stuffed-with-a-fragment-of-homers-iliad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/north-africa\/egypt\/egypt-why-was-an-egyptian-mummy-stuffed-with-a-fragment-of-homers-iliad\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt: Why Was an Egyptian Mummy Stuffed With a Fragment of Homer&#8217;s Iliad?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"63\">Archaeologists have found something unexpected inside a 1,600-year-old Roman-era Egyptian mummy: a fragment of Homer&#8217;s Iliad. It wasn&#8217;t placed beside the body, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/passage-from-homers-iliad-discovered-in-the-abdomen-of-a-roman-era-egyptian-mummy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">inside the mummy&#8217;s abdomen<\/a>. But the real surprise isn&#8217;t just where the fragment was found. It&#8217;s how it got there. To understand, we must go back &#8211; to the Iliad itself, and to what it became in the Roman world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"55\">In <a href=\"https:\/\/uk.bookshop.org\/a\/15793\/9780520281431\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Iliad<\/a>, a poem shaped in the 8th century BC and attributed to <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/topics\/homer-9309\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Homer<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/topics\/trojan-war-30919\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trojan war<\/a> does not end in triumph or renewal. It&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202605140006.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 North Africa <a title=\"Egypt\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/north-africa\/egypt\/\">Egypt<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Archaeologists have found something unexpected inside a 1,600-year-old Roman-era Egyptian mummy: a fragment of Homer&#8217;s Iliad. It wasn&#8217;t placed beside the body, but inside the mummy&#8217;s abdomen. But the real surprise isn&#8217;t just where the fragment was found. It&#8217;s how it got there. To understand, we must go back &#8211; to the Iliad itself, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":233494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[258,256,4697,415,6639,54407,54408,54409,43903,257,254,54406],"class_list":["post-233493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-egypt","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-egypt","tag-egypt-news","tag-egyptian","tag-fragment","tag-homers","tag-iliad","tag-mummy","tag-news","tag-south-africa-today","tag-stuffed"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}