Sappho was considered the greatest lyric poet of the ancient world — Plato called her the “Tenth Muse.” But the Catholic Church burned her work, and for centuries she survived only in fragments quoted by other writers. Then archaeologists began finding her poems in the most unlikely places: ancient Egyptian trash heaps, mummy wrappings recycled as papyrus, and crumbling manuscripts in monastery libraries. Her resurrection from garbage is one of the great recovery stories in literary history.

This episode traces what we know of Sappho’s life on Lesbos, the destruction of her work, and the centuries-long archaeological rescue that has slowly, fragment by fragment, brought her poetry back from the dead.

• What we know about Sappho’s life on Lesbos and the poetry that made her antiquity’s most celebrated lyricist
• The destruction of her work — book burnings, neglect, and the Christian suppression of pagan literature
• The Egyptian trash heap discoveries and mummy wrapping papyri that recovered lost poems
• The ongoing hunt for fragments and why each new discovery rewrites our understanding of ancient poetry