In Egypt, archaeologists have found, alongside a 2,000-year-old mummy, a fragment of Homer's Iliad, an ancient account of the Trojan War. The passage from Book 2 of the famed epic poem describes the naval strength of the Achaean army that was besieging the city of Troy.

A team directed by Ignasi-Xavier Adiego of the University of Barcelona found the papyrus next to the mummy of a nonroyal male at Oxyrhynchus, a regional capital that was at one time the third-largest city in Egypt. The city ruins, near what is now El-Bahnasa about 120 miles south of Cairo, are known for the number of preserved papyri there. The weather (almost never rain) and landscape (very much a desert) are conducive to the preservation of papyri, and thousands have been found there since the first European to take a considered interest, Jean-Dominique Vivant Denon, who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his expedition to Egypt in 1798. Among the many varied fragments found of ancient works are a bit of Euclid's Elements.

The team said that the inclusion of the papyrus, sealed inside a clay packet, with the mummy would have been intentional and that perhaps it was meant to accompany the person into the afterlife along with any number of other objects that Egyptians typically stored alongside bodies.

At any rate, it is the first such item found from the ancient Greek tradition and reflects the Greek influence in Egypt, not only as the two civilizations were trade partners and economic enemies but also when they were melded under the reign of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy I, and their successors.