Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibits 2,300-year-old Odyssey papyrus

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has returned a 2,300-year-old papyrus fragment to public display in Gallery 162. The artifact, dating to the early Hellenistic period between 285 and 250 BCE, is considered one of the oldest surviving written pieces of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ in existence.

Originating from Egypt, the fragment was discovered in 1902 near the ancient city of El Kab and was donated to the museum by the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1909. The piece is significant not only for its antiquity but also for its textual variations; it contains three lines from Book 20 of the ‘Odyssey’ that do not appear in the standard modern versions of the epic.

Séan Hemingway, the Met’s chief curator of Greek and Roman Art, noted that the fragment provides rare evidence of how Homeric epics circulated and varied during antiquity. The artifact is displayed in a double-sided manner to allow visitors to examine both sides of the papyrus and its cross-weave fiber structure.