Renais­sance Europe admired ancient Rome, ancient Rome admired ancient Greece, and ancient Greece admired ancient Egypt. But the admi­ra­tion could actu­al­ly go both ways in that last case, since the two civ­i­liza­tions’ peri­ods of exis­tence over­lapped. The Greeks made no secret of their regard for Egypt as a far deep­er well of knowl­edge and wis­dom (indeed, much of what we know about ancient Egypt today comes from Greek records), but archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence shows that the Egyp­tians, in turn, were hard­ly dis­mis­sive of Greek accom­plish­ment. Many Hel­lenic texts have been dis­cov­ered in Egypt­ian bur­ial sites, but only recent­ly has a Greek lit­er­ary work turned up pack­aged with a mum­my — and not just any lit­er­ary work, but pages from Home­r’s Ili­ad.

Unearthed from a 1,600-year-old Roman-era tomb in the Egypt­ian town of Al Bah­nasa, the frag­ment con­tains lines from Book 2’s epic “cat­a­logue of ships,” which lists all the ves­sels the Achaean army sends off to Troy. It dates from an era in ancient Egypt, cen­turies after the reign of the Greek-descend­ed Cleopa­tra, when “Greek lit­er­ary papyri may have func­tioned as a cru­cial cul­tur­al pass­port,” as the New York Times’ Franz Lidz writes.

“Being Hel­lenic con­not­ed an exclu­sive social sta­tus and finan­cial priv­i­lege — and had to be metic­u­lous­ly doc­u­ment­ed through genealo­gies going back across sev­er­al cen­turies.” It’s pos­si­ble that pages of the Ili­ad were assumed to act as a kind of Greek pass­port that would let the deceased bypass the tri­als of the under­world described in the Egypt­ian Book of the Dead.

So ven­er­at­ed was Home­r’s work at this stage of ancient Egypt­ian his­to­ry, in fact, that physi­cians also cred­it­ed it with cura­tive prop­er­ties. “For a bed-bound patient shiv­er­ing with malar­ia, the pre­scrip­tion was sim­ple: Brace your head against a papyrus scroll of Book 4 to break the fever.” What­ev­er the effec­tive­ness of the Ili­ad against infec­tious dis­ease, or even to assure safe pas­sage into the world beyond, its con­tin­ued study around the world more than a mil­len­ni­um and a half after it was get­ting slipped into Egypt­ian tombs — and the bet­ter part of three mil­len­nia after its com­po­si­tion — sug­gests a kind of his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al pow­er not pos­sessed by ordi­nary lit­er­a­ture. If Christo­pher Nolan’s com­ing adap­ta­tion of the Odyssey hap­pens to do well enough to get Hol­ly­wood back on its feet, per­haps we’ll have to give it to the ancient Egyp­tians and admit that Homer real­ly does offer sal­va­tion after all.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Homer’s Ili­ad and Odyssey: Free Audio­Books & eBooks

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

The Only Illus­trat­ed Man­u­script of Homer’s Ili­ad from Antiq­ui­ty

The Old­est Tat­toos Ever Dis­cov­ered on an Egypt­ian Mum­my Date Back 5,000 Years

The Ancient Egypt­ian Book of the Dead: A Guide­book for Sur­viv­ing the After­life

How Did the Egyp­tians Make Mum­mies? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Art of Mum­mi­fi­ca­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

With­out want­i­ng to make too broad a gen­er­al­iza­tion, it’s safe to say that Sat­ur­day Evening Post read­ers prob­a­bly did­n’t under­stand much about what was going on in San Fran­cis­co dur­ing the Sum­mer of Love. Or they did­n’t, at least, until the mag­a­zine ran “Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem,” Joan Did­ion’s simul­ta­ne­ous report from and obit­u­ary for the drug-fueled seek­er scene that had formed around Haight-Ash­bury. Quite pos­si­bly her sin­gle most wide­ly known piece of writ­ing, the piece relates her encoun­ters both direct and indi­rect with par­tic­i­pants in the coun­ter­cul­ture both obscure and promi­nent.

That lat­ter group includes no less a San Fran­cis­co hip­pie insti­tu­tion than the Grate­ful Dead, Did­ion’s inter­view with whom did­n’t make it into the final piece. But over near­ly six decades since then, its type­script has remained among her papers, and it was recent­ly dis­cov­ered in Did­ion and John Gre­go­ry Dun­ne’s lit­er­ary archive at the New York Pub­lic Library by Did­ion biog­ra­ph­er Tim­o­thy Denevi. Just days ago, music jour­nal­ist Jeff Weiss post­ed the 1967 text online, describ­ing it “as a land­mark ear­ly inter­view with the band direct­ly after the release of their self-titled debut album, but before nation­al star­dom swept them on the Gold­en Road to unlim­it­ed devo­tion and drug con­sump­tion.”

In a sense, the mem­bers them­selves occu­pied the eye of the coun­ter­cul­tur­al storm. “I told the Dead I was try­ing to fig­ure out what was going on,” Did­ion writes, “and one of them said ‘When you find out, tell us.’ ” Top­ics of dis­cus­sion include the venues they dis­like (Los Ange­les’ Chee­tah, for instance, where “there was a com­put­er, every­thing was pro­grammed”), their resent­ment for the Coun­cil for a Sum­mer of Love’s attempts to orga­nize the bur­geon­ing scene, the ongo­ing dete­ri­o­ra­tion of that scene (“a small and pro­duc­tive cre­ative thing” whose ener­gy even­tu­al­ly attract­ed “all these peo­ple in some lame bag or anoth­er”), their loathing of the then-new radio hit “San Fran­cis­co (Be Sure to Wear Flow­ers in Your Hair),” and the regret­table tem­po­rary absence of Ron “Pig­pen” McK­er­nan (“eas­i­ly our most pho­to­genic mem­ber”).

It was around this same time that the Dead were also inter­viewed by CBS TV news for “The Hip­pie Temp­ta­tion,” pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, a seg­ment on the pop­u­lar­i­ty and dan­gers of LSD. Where­as they came off in that con­text as denizens of the bel­ly of the beast, if rea­son­ably artic­u­late ones, they seem pos­i­tive­ly straight (in the par­lance of the time) com­pared with most of the oth­er inter­vie­wees in “Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem”: the dis­ori­ent­ed groupies, the aggres­sive­ly enlight­ened bohemi­an blowhards, the infa­mous five-year-old on acid in “High Kinder­garten.” It’s no sur­prise that the Dead inspired one of the few last­ing move­ments to come out of that head­i­ly utopi­an era, thanks in part to its very peri­patet­ic form­less­ness and lack of a polit­i­cal pro­gram. As Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s Paul Kant­ner tend­ed to recall, for a few weeks there in 1966, every­thing was per­fect — but Joan Did­ion turned up in 1967. Read her lost inter­view with the Grate­ful Dead here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Every Grate­ful Dead Song Anno­tat­ed in Hyper­text: Web Project Reveals the Deep Lit­er­ary Foun­da­tions of the Dead’s Lyrics

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

“The Hip­pie Temp­ta­tion”: An Angst-Rid­den CBS TV Show Warns of the Risks of LSD (1967)

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead (1970)

Read 12 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion for Free Online, Span­ning Her Career From 1965 to 2013

Joan Did­ion Cre­ates a Hand­writ­ten List of the 19 Books That Changed Her Life

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.