Other sources say it’s a fragment.
I’m not particularly surprised. Consider how used newspaper is used in homes. Great for puppy training. Newspaper has been used as insulation in inexpensive structures. Maybe morticians have used it to stuff body cavities?
Link Archaeologists stunned to find copy of Homer’s Iliad inside ancient Egyptian mummy | The Independent
I opened this cause I was confused what an “E-mummy” was.
I’m happy to find out it meant “Egyptian”.
Whew!
Yes, paper, papyrus, leaves, feathers and fabric have stuffed things since humans started needing things to be stuffed.
Bodies being stuffed is probably (don’t really know) particular to Mummy making.
I’ve taken old quilts apart to repair. You would not believe what people used to “fill” their quilts. I’ve been looking for that missing parchment/vellum of the original constitution. Alas , hasn’t happened yet.
Yep, me too. I was wondering how anyone could electrify a mummy.
This was about 1,000 years before printed newspapers. This was from a laboriously hand scribed tome written on a relatively expensive medium. Its purpose in this case is almost certainly the same as that for including weapons, jewelry, keepsakes, and other valuables in a burial.
Lot of long words in the article heading. I was trying to shorten it anyway possible. The heading still uses three lines on my phone screen.
It bothers me the writers used “copy” in the Heading/Subject and link. They finally admit it’s a fragment in the article.
It was found in the mummy’s gut. I guess absorbing any fluids.
I’ve tripled checked that autocorrect doesn’t change mummy to mommy. 
1600 years ago ≈ 400 A.D. IOW, after classical times. A text dating to pre-Roman, early Ptolemaic or especially pre-Ptolemaic era would have been far more significant.
That’s so last year.
Nope, just stuffing. Happened a lot.
Paper wasn’t made out of trees back then.
It was a papyrus, which I know nothing about.
Or it was parchment or vellum which is made from hide. (Really really thin leather, goat I believe.)
It wasn’t like they tore up an old book and stuffed in this mummy.
I remember reading thrifty medieval monks reused parchment. I can’t remember the documents, but researchers are using lasers to try and recover important writings that the Monk’s ruined with trivial new writing on top.
The word you might be thinking of is Palimpsest - Wikipedia
Thank you.
It’s been years since I watched the documentaries on scrolls. I remembered the process but not the word for it.
For some reason, my first association was a binomial, like in taxonomy, such as C. elegans or E. coli…
This mummy was from around 400 AD and paper from trees predates that by hundreds of years. Not all paper is made from trees anyway. Papyrus technically isn’t paper but it is made from a plant and is, of course, similar.
Gotcha. But wouldn’t something like the Iliad be on parchment. I mean, the Mummy surely had some status if it was being mummified in the first place.
So, no stinkin’ tree paper gonna do.
ETA ..I just Googled (grain of salt) Egyptians didn’t use paper from trees.
Papyrus was the thing.
Personally I’m gonna start making notes on Ostraca. Those will last awhile. Guess I better take the hammer to the china cupboard.
Probably with leyden jars. And lightning.
It’s alive! It’s alive!
Oooooooo! Weird science!
I’m not surprised either. I assume they weren’t done reading it, and wanted to continue when they got to the other side.
As the article briefly mentions towards the end, there is the famous group of papyri fragments that were also discovered at Oxyrhynchus in the late nineteenth century. Oddly enough, two of those fragments also included parts of the Illiad ship catalogue.
My bio nerd half briefly overpowered my history nerd half. I read that as Oncorhynchus for a second and did a double-take. For the non-cognoscenti rhynchus means beak or snout in Greek so it is incorporated into a ton of scientific animal names.