Reading the 'Iliad' in the Afterlife

Archaeologists have found a papyrus copy of Homer’s Iliad on an ancient Egyptian mummy. This was the first time that a Greek literary text had been found used in the preservation process.

The discovery has implications for our knowledge of funerary practices and religious life in ancient Egypt. The papyrus was placed on the abdomen as part of the embalming ritual. That's not unusual. Egyptian mummies from this period have previously been found to carry papyri written in Greek. Those earlier papyri discoveries had text of magical or ritualistic content. This fragment was discovered in the abdomen of a mummy buried in a Roman-era tomb in Oxyrhynchus around 1,600 years ago. 

This is the second major discovery involving an ancient poetic text in recent weeks. I wrote earlier about the discovery of the oldest English copy of a poem. 

The identified Iliad text found is from the catalogue of ships in Book II of the epic poem, which contains a famous passage listing the Greek forces massing before Troy.

Why was this text chosen to be included with the mummification? Researchers say they are unsure why this particular Greek text was chosen for the mummification process.

Roman-era mummification in Oxyrhynchus combined traditional Egyptian, Greek, and Roman customs. Ancient Egyptian priests preserved bodies using natron salt to dehydrate them and wrapping them up in linen for about 40 days. Instead of using traditional canopic jars to preserve organs, they preferred to pack the body with preserved materials along with papyri containing Greek literature sealed with clay inside the chest or pelvic cavity.

Was it something to read in the afterlife?

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Prompt: Mirrors

Venus at the Mirror

Mirrors often show up in poetry in symbolic roles, as self-knowledge, distortion, doubles, and thresholds. Let's look at some varied approaches to the mirror in poetry.

"Mirror" by Sylvia Plath is probably the most famous “mirror poem.” The mirror speaks here in a cold, objective voice: “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.” It becomes a symbol of unyielding truth, especially as a woman ages and confronts her changing identity. The mirror is not comforting; it is brutally honest, almost inhuman. 

In "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" by Anne Sexton, she rewrites the fairy tale, focusing on the mirror as an instrument of patriarchal judgment and female self-surveillance.

An early example is "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The lady of the poem lives under a curse and can only see the world through a mirror, never directly.  Today, we might call this mediated reality. When she turns away from it to look directly, her world collapses. This poem explores the danger of moving from **illusion into reality**, and the cost of authentic experience. 

I have always loved the mirror as a portal or threshold in Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Okay, it is prose, but Lewis Carroll embedded poems in the book. He treats the mirror as a passage into an inverted world. That is a classic metaphor for crossing into the unconscious or the surreal. 

What we see when we look in a mirror might be an uncanny double. "Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa is set at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which is a reflective black surface. The speaker sees his own face merge with the names of the dead. That mix - “I’m stone. I’m flesh” mixes past and present, self and ghost.  

Send us a poem that uses mirrors in some symbolic way. 

Submission Deadline: June 30, 2026

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Oldest English Poem Discovered

Memorial to Caedmon at St. Mary's Churchyard. The inscription reads,
"To the glory of God and in memory of Caedmon, 

the father of English Sacred Song. 

Fell asleep hard by, 680" 

Photo: Rich Tea, CC BY-SA 2.0

Researchers leafing through a ninth-century manuscript have discovered a copy of the earliest surviving English poem, according to a recently published study. Known as “Caedmon’s Hymn,” the short verse is considered to be a foundational text in English literature. 

Purportedly composed by an illiterate cowherd after experiencing a religious vision, the nine-line verse references heaven and praises God for creation. The poem is known for its inclusion in some versions of the medieval “Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” written by the monk Bede the Venerable, which was reproduced about 200 times. 

Now let us praise Heaven-Kingdom's guardian,

the Maker's might and his mind's thoughts,

the work of the glory-father—of every wonder,

eternal Lord. He established a beginning.

He first shaped for men's sons

Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator;

then middle-earth mankind's guardian,

eternal Lord, afterwards prepared

the earth for men, the Lord almighty.

The Old English version reads:

Nu scilun herga hefenricæs uard

metudæs mehti and his modgithanc

uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuæs

eci dryctin or astelidæ.

he ærist scop ældu barnum

hefen to hrofæ halig sceppend

tha middingard moncynnæs uard

eci dryctin æfter tiadæ

firum foldu frea allmehtig

Cædmon (657–684) is the earliest English poet whose name is known. This Northumbrian cowherd cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (now known as Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of Hilda. He was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but, according to the 8th-century Christian historian and saint Bede, learned to compose one night in a dream. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational Christian poet.

While two older copies of the poem have surfaced, they were both written in Latin. The recent discovery was written in Old English and embedded in the main Latin text, suggesting English poetry was valued by Latin readers much earlier than previously thought.

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That Poetic Voice We Sometimes Use

The premise of a New York Times piece titled "What's With That Voice People Use When Reciting Poetry?" is that there’s a distinctive, stylized way many poets read their work aloud.

This is often called “Poet Voice,” and the article digs into what it is and why it’s so common. If you attend poetry readings and if you yourself read poetry aloud, you probably have encountered this Poet Voice.

It can be a slow cadence, with dramatic pauses, a lilting or monotone delivery, or a sing-songy inflection. It is not that person's natural speaking voice. Poet Voice is not meant as a compliment.  

On the page, poetry is quiet, private, and intimate. There is some "voice" in our head when we read silently. Is that the voice we use when we read aloud?

Do you hear this different way of reading as comforting and familiar, or as awkward?

We know there are poets who turn reading into a performance rather than language meant to connect.

Poets aren’t generally "performers," but still can fall into this same vocal pattern.

That article isn’t arguing for or against Poet Voice. It’s asking: what is this “weird poetic monotone rhythmic thing,” why does it persist, and how does voice change what a poem means when it moves from page to performance. The general takeaway from the article is that Poet Voice isn’t tied to one generation or school of poetry. It shows up at “the open mic and the Pulitzer podium alike,” and many poets admit they dislike it even while using it.

Here are a few poets who get mentioned as examples of “Poet Voice,” either in the *NYT* piece’s broader conversation or in the related analysis it draws on:

Louise Glück reads her poem "The Wild Iris." The Nobel laureate’s readings are frequently described as having that “precious, lilting cadence” with down-slurring line endings

Robert Bly is a poet who certainly reads his poem in an interesting way. I've heard him at reading read the same poem several times in a row, as if he thought we missed something the first time. Bly’s readings are faster, more emphatic, and less singsong. It's unusual but probably not what is meant as Poet Voice.

Robert Pinsky also has a distinctive way of reading. Is it Poet Voice? Here he reads "The Forgetting."

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To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
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