Rare Fourth-Century Fragment of The Odyssey Uncovered in Dutch University Archives

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The short version

• Mark de Kreij discovered the fragment while cataloging early Christian manuscripts acquired by Utrecht University in the mid-twentieth century.
• The parchment dates to approximately 300 C.E. and contains three lines absent from modern versions of the poem, suggesting textual variation.
• Only about thirty similar fragments from this period are known to exist, making the find significant for understanding how ancient texts were preserved.

A small piece of parchment containing verses from Homer’s The Odyssey has been identified in the archives of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The discovery was made by Mark de Kreij, a specialist in Greek language and literature at Radboud University, who was examining a collection of early Christian manuscripts stored within the university library. The fragment, measuring approximately three inches, is handwritten in Greek and dates to the fourth century C.E., placing it among the rarest surviving examples of the ancient epic poem.

The manuscript cache had been purchased by the university in the mid-twentieth century from a German scholar. While most of the texts in the collection were written in Coptic, an Egyptian script that incorporates Greek letters, some documents were entirely in Greek. De Kreij noticed a damaged and discolored piece with small, neat lettering among these Greek texts. Upon closer inspection, he recognized the handwriting as belonging to a copy of The Odyssey, specifically from Book 12.

The verses on the fragment describe a pivotal moment in the narrative where the sun god Helios discovers that Odysseus and his crew have slaughtered his sacred cattle on the island of Thrinacia. This act of defiance leads Zeus to send a storm that destroys Odysseus’ ship and kills his companions, leaving the hero alone for the remainder of his journey home. De Kreij noted that this particular passage is engaging compared to other sections of the epic, highlighting the dramatic tension present in the original text.

Scholars believe the fragment was once part of a pocket-sized edition of the complete Odyssey, roughly the size of a modern e-reader. It likely belonged to an individual living in Egypt’s Fayoum Oasis around 300 C.E. The material was originally unearthed in an Egyptian necropolis in 1902. Its small format suggests that portable copies of classical literature were available and used by readers during the Greco-Roman period, challenging assumptions about the size and accessibility of such texts at the time.

The discovery is particularly notable because it contains three lines that are missing from contemporary versions of The Odyssey. These variations provide evidence of how the text evolved over centuries before being standardized in later editions. Such discrepancies help researchers understand the transmission history of classical literature and the potential diversity of early manuscript traditions. The fragment offers a tangible link to the textual fluidity that characterized ancient literary culture.

Fragments of The Odyssey dating to the third or fourth century are extremely scarce, with only about thirty such pieces known to exist. The oldest surviving book-form copy, known as the Manchester Odyssey, is held at the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library and was inscribed in Egypt during the same period as the Utrecht find. Experts have described encounters with these ancient documents as emotionally resonant, given their proximity to the time when the poems were first written down.

De Kreij was working on a project to study and publish the ancient manuscripts from the university’s special collections, many of which originate from Egypt’s Greco-Roman era. This period saw significant cultural exchange under Classical powers such as Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire. The findings from this research will be included in his forthcoming book, Hieratic, Demotic, Greek and Coptic Texts in the Utrecht University Collection, which aims to document and analyze these historical artifacts.

The identification of this fragment underscores the ongoing importance of archival research in uncovering lost or overlooked historical materials. Even within well-studied collections, new discoveries can emerge through careful examination by specialists. The find adds to the limited corpus of early Odyssey manuscripts and provides fresh data for scholars studying the physical history of classical texts. It also highlights the role of academic institutions in preserving and making accessible these fragile remnants of antiquity.

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• Smithsonian Magazine↗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’