Why Lost Books Survive: Archaeology and the Accidental Preservation of Ancient Literature
A fragment of Homer’s Iliad discovered against the abdomen of a Roman-period mummy at Oxyrhynchus belongs to a much larger archaeological pattern. Ancient texts have survived not simply because people treasured them, but because they were thrown away, recycled into funerary equipment, buried with the dead or burned beyond ordinary use. The history of lost literature is also a history of taphonomy.