The portion of Homer's Iliad discovered on a Greco-Roman mummy in Egypt was not a text meant to accompany the deceased on their journey to the afterlife, but rather a functional component of mummification. This was confirmed by Gianluca Miniaci, an Egyptologist at the University of Pisa, in response to the recent find in the necropolis of Oxyrhynchus, not far from where the University of Pisa has been doing archaeological research since 2015. A Spanish archaeological mission in Oxyrhynchus, in the governorate of Minya, discovered a Roman tomb with numerous mummies and valuable objects, including a papyrus containing a passage from the second book of the Iliad, the so-called "Catalogue of Ships" (II, 494-759), which lists the Greek contingents heading to Troy. This discovery may have initially suggested a symbolic or religious significance related to the cult of the dead, but it actually has a very other explanation. "Contrary to common perception, this fragment does not suggest bringing a section of the Iliad on one's funeral journey. Rather, papyrus is employed as a material to occupy the abdomen and prevent the skin and tissue from sagging after the removal of the viscera, similar to the way we would have used old newspaper", explains Miniaci. As a result, the papyrus served a functional purpose rather than a symbolic or religious one: it stabilized the deceased's body throughout the embalming process. "The papyrus was discovered in an area of extraordinary archaeological significance", Miniaci emphasizes. "The necropolis of Oxyrhynchus is situated near the site of Zawyet Sultan, where the University of Pisa has been conducting excavation campaigns for over a decade. These campaigns have already uncovered highly intriguing funerary structures, including a small, unfinished pyramid that we are currently studying to ascertain its purpose and functionality".