Something remarkable happened in ancient Egypt: someone was buried with pages from Homer's Iliad . Not gold, not jewels—literature. The recently discovered mummy, clutching verses about Achilles and Troy, reveals something profound about how humans have always understood stories. They don't just entertain us in life; they guide us beyond it.
This archaeological discovery illuminates a truth that echoes through today's literary landscape: stories have their own afterlife, one that often outlasts and outlives their creators in ways we never expect.
The pattern appears everywhere once you start looking. Doireann Ní Ghríofa's Said the Dead resurrects the forgotten voices of Irish asylum patients, breathing life into records that bureaucracy left to rot. These weren't famous writers—they were people whose stories were deemed unworthy of preservation, yet here they are, speaking across centuries through fragments and files.