{"id":863225,"date":"2026-08-19T02:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T02:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/863225\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T02:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T02:28:11","slug":"see-the-worlds-oldest-odyssey-copy-at-the-met","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/863225\/","title":{"rendered":"See the World\u2019s Oldest \u2018Odyssey\u2019 Copy at the Met"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Christopher Nolan\u2019s <\/a>The Odyssey<\/a> has you suddenly brushing up on Homer, New York has a considerably older version of the story waiting for you\u2014roughly 2,300 years older, in fact.<\/p>\n

The Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a> has put the oldest surviving fragment of The Odyssey back on public display, giving visitors a chance to see a piece of the epic poem dating to around 285\u2013250 BCE. The remarkably ancient bit of papyrus is now on view in Gallery 162 in the Met\u2019s Greek and Roman Art galleries after spending an extended period off display.<\/p>\n

And while calling it a \u201ccopy\u201d might conjure up something you could actually sit down and read, temper those expectations. The artifact is a papyrus fragment measuring just over 7\u00a0inches, containing lines from Book 20 of Homer\u2019s epic. It was made in Ptolemaic Egypt and written with a combination of charcoal and water on papyrus.\u00a0The fragment is particularly important because it\u2019s the first early Ptolemaic fragment of The Odyssey ever discovered. Even more intriguing: it contains three lines that don\u2019t appear in the standard version of the poem we know today.<\/p>\n

\"The
\nPhotograph: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe Odyssey <\/p>\n

That discrepancy offers a glimpse at how The Odyssey evolved long before it became the fixed text\u00a0we’ve read for generations. The poem, composed around the eighth century BCE, started as an oral tradition, passed down and performed by bards rather than pulled from a bookshelf.<\/p>\n

In a recent Met video, Sean Hemingway, curator in charge of the museum\u2019s Department of Greek and Roman Art, explains that bards would \u201coccasionally embellish and have different versions of these stories,\u201d helping account for those extra lines. Visitors can see both the front and back of the fragment in its display.<\/p>\n

The papyrus is also part of a larger Odyssey-themed journey through the Met\u2019s collection. The museum has highlighted seven works<\/a> connected to Odysseus and his adventures, including a tiny carnelian scarab depicting the Trojan Horse, a fifth-century BCE bowl showing Odysseus pursuing Circe and a Roman fresco featuring the Cyclops Polyphemus.<\/p>\n

Now you\u00a0can spend the afternoon with Odysseus without sitting through a blockbuster\u2014or embarking on a perilous 10-year voyage home\u2014just head to Gallery 162.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey has you suddenly brushing up on Homer, New York has a considerably older…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[9930,76,354,355,49,48,11451,356,75,11452],"class_list":["post-863225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-categories-art","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-news-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}