Sadly, the article says nothing about how old the fragment is or how it compares to other early copies of the Iliad. Somewhat amazingly, the earliest complete copy of the Iliad is from around 950 C.E.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetus_A

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anon291 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not that surprising. The earliest complete copies of many ancient texts is similarly dated. For example, the earliest copy of the Rg Veda is dated to about that age as well. It's hard to keep complete copies of big books.

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wavefunction 3 hours ago | parent [-]

As well, both the Iliad and Vedas are originally oral traditions. Likely there were different versions and different parts of the stories were emphasized to appeal to their audiences and local tastes and current events. Something that can still be apparent in historical texts but probably greatly reduced by the function of printed versions presenting a singular "authoritative version."

	▲	z3phyr 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The Vedas are surprisingly uniform across a very long time period.