Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific advances and more.
CNN —
A seven-word inscription accidentally discovered on a 3,700-year-old lice comb is the oldest known sentence written in an alphabet, according to a new study.
The inscription on the ivory comb is in the Canaanite language, the earliest alphabet and the source of the Latin alphabet used today to write English and many other European languages. The words are a humble request perhaps shared by parents of young children today: “May this tusk eradicate the lice from hair and beard.”
Small clusters of Canaanite letters have been identified on pottery fragments and arrowheads, but This is the first time scientists have found a complete sentence written in what Yosef Garfinkel, a professor of archeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, called the first alphabet-based language, making it a groundbreaking discovery The history of the human ability to write.
“Nothing like this has ever been found. It’s not a king’s royal inscription… that’s something very human. You are immediately connected to this person who had this crest”, saId Garfinkel, co-author of the study published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.
The very first writing system arose about 5,000 years ago and was used by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia (in what is now Iraq). Like Egyptian hieroglyphs, the system known in later stages as cuneiform relied on hundreds of pictographs to represent words, ideas, and sounds. Garfinkel said that the Canaanites were the first to use letters representing sounds in their writing system, which later evolved into the Phoenician, Greek, and eventually the Latin alphabet most commonly used today.
“The Canaanites invented the alphabet. … Nowadays everyone in the world can read and write according to the alphabet system. This is truly one of the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind,” he said. “When you write in English, you really use Canaanite.”
The ridge was found in 2016 at an Israeli archaeological site called Lachish, a Canaanite city-state in the second millennium BC. B.C., excavated. However, it wasn’t until 2021 when Madeleine Mumcuoglu, a research fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, first noticed the engraving when she zoomed in on an iPhone snap of the comb after completing her examination of the lice remains found on the artifact.
“I just took a picture with my iPhone. And it wasn’t good enough. So I put it in a very strong light and took another picture,” she said.
Mumcuoglu was surprised to see the flat letters on the small crest. After careful study, the research team identified 17 letters that make up the seven words.
The researchers could not directly date the comb, despite two attempts to radiocarbon date it, nor were they able to extract DNA from the lice remains embedded in the comb. The study team assumes that it dates from around 1700 BC. based on a comparison of the letters with those on pottery or ceramics of known age.
Christopher Rollston, professor of Northwest Semitic languages and literatures at George Washington University, said there was “some room to debate the exact date” of the ridge, but agreed that the inscription dates to the first half of the second millennium B.C. Dated and said the work The team’s work in deciphering the inscription was “brilliant”. He was not involved in the study.
“The fact that this inscription is about ordinary life is particularly fascinating. Throughout human history, lice have been a constant problem,” he said via email. “We can only hope that this inscribed comb was useful in doing what it was supposed to do: eradicate some of those pesky bugs.”
The comb is similar in design to today’s plastic or metal lice combs. On one side there are 14 fine teeth for removing lice and their eggs, on the other side six more widely spaced teeth used to untangle knotted hair. Head lice have been bothering people for a long time. The earliest direct evidence is a 10,000-year-old intact louse egg on the hair of a Brazilian mummy, but DNA analysis suggests we’ve been coexisting with head lice for much longer.
The inscription and the fact that the crest was made of elephant ivory led Mumcuoglu to suspect that it might have been a gift for someone important. “From my point of view it was an elite product.”
She was also confused by its small size – it measures 3.5 centimeters by 2.5 centimeters (1.4 inch by 1 inch).
“Perhaps you kept it in your pocket and used it discreetly. Maybe back then people were ashamed to have head lice.”