Iliad, and the art of dying
A group of researchers have found a fragment from the Iliad buried with a mummy from Roman-era Egypt
If Socrates was right when he remarked in the Phaedo that “Philosophy is training for death”, it is perhaps not too much of a leap to imagine that literature can be a guide in the afterlife. A group of researchers, including academics from the University of Barcelona and the Free University of Berlin, have found a fragment from the Iliad buried with a mummy from Roman-era Egypt. The elaborate tombs of Egyptian royalty and nobility often have texts, but these are usually more practical guides on navigating life after death — the Book of the Dead, for example. Homer’s epic, though, is a little more poetic: “Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”
There is a sociological explanation for the fragment of the epic interred in the tomb. With the beginning of the Ptolemaic age after Alexander’s invasion of Egypt, religious customs — especially funeral rites and mummification — evolved, and many of Greek origin may have wanted to preserve their Hellenistic roots. The Iliad, in such a context, becomes a religious text.
But there is, perhaps, another less concrete message about life and death — and stories and poems — from the fragment and the mummy. The big question about life is how to deal with the mystery at its end. The Socratic way of contemplation and detachment is one path prescribed through the centuries. For those who are fond of living while they are alive, though, there’s always a story and a poem. Who’s to say that isn’t heaven?
