A Researcher Studying in a Dutch Library Was Amazed to Discover a Scrap of Parchment From a 1,700-Year-Old Copy of ‘The Odyssey’

In the stacks of a library in the Netherlands, one researcher has discovered a positively epic scrap of torn parchment. Handwritten in Greek, the three-inch piece of paper contains verses from a fourth-century copy of The Odyssey—the ancient epic poem that stole the silver screen this summer. Attributed to Homer and written around 700 B.C.E., The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year homeward journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the Trojan War.

The fragment was hidden among a collection of early Christian manuscripts from Egypt, stored within the library of Utrecht University. According to a statement, the school had purchased the cache, which belonged to a German scholar, in the mid-20th century. Most of the texts had been written in Coptic—an Egyptian script that includes Greek letters—but some were in Greek.

Within these Greek texts, Mark de Kreij, an expert in Greek language and literature at nearby Radboud University, found a “damaged and discolored fragment with very small, neat letters,” per the statement. He recognized it as an excerpt from The Odyssey—specifically, Book 12. Odysseus and his crew dock there for what they expect to be a short rest, but storms force them to stay for a month—without adequate supplies.

Despite Odysseus’ warnings, the starving Greeks eventually slaughter and eat Helios’ sacred cows. The verses on the discovered fragment, according to the university’s statement, “describe the moment Helios finds out what Odysseus’ companions have done.” In the next lines of Homer’s epic, Odysseus recounts how the sky god Zeus avenges Helios by sending a storm to destroy Odysseus’ ship and kill his crew. It’s a turning point in the king’s tale: when he becomes a homecoming party of one.

The fragment was found alone, but it was once part of what would have been “a pocket edition of the complete Odyssey (about the size of a Kindle),” owned by someone living in Egypt’s Fayoum Oasis around 300 C.E., per the statement. It was discovered in an Egyptian necropolis in 1902, and it contains three lines that are missing from the modern version of the poem, highlighting the epic’s evolution. Portions of The Odyssey that are this old are rare: Only about 30 pieces have been found that date to the third or fourth century.

The oldest copy of the epic in book form is dubbed the “Manchester Odyssey,” after its current home, the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library. It was inscribed in Egypt in the third century—around the same time as the slip of parchment discovered in Utrecht. Most of these texts, like the Odyssey fragment, are from Egypt’s Greco-Roman period—when the country was controlled by Classical powers, such as Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire.