September
18
/ 2026
A torn fragment of parchment safeguarded in Utrecht University Library has just been recognized as a rare fragment of Homer’s Odyssey of around 2,000 years old. The piece authenticated by Mark de Kreij from Radboud University contains verses from Book 12 of the epic, and it is possible that it was part of a pocket sized copy carried in Roman Egypt. A manuscript hiding in plain sight The find was made in the course of a project that aimed to study ancient manuscripts in the Special Collections of the city of Utrecht. In the mid-20th century, Utrecht University obtained the manuscript from the heirs of the German researcher Carl Schmidt, who was believed to have acquired it somewhere in the
