Israeli researchers have discovered a 3,700-year-old inscription on an ivory lice comb. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) announced on Wednesday that this is the oldest written sentence in Canaanite (also Canaanite) found in Israel to date.
“May this tusk eradicate the lice in hair and beard,” says the find, which dates to about 1700 BC. “The inscription is direct evidence of the use of the alphabet in everyday life some 3,700 years ago. This is a milestone in the history of the human ability to write,” says Josef Garfinkel of HU. The archaeologist was involved in the excavations.
Caption discovered during post-processing
In addition, the finding indicates that even people with a high social status suffered from lice. Ivory was a very expensive material at the time. The small comb measures about 3.5 by 2.5 centimeters and was found in 2017, according to the university statement. However, the inscription was only discovered this year during post-processing.
In Israel, single words in the Canaanite language had previously been discovered, but never a complete meaningful sentence, according to the researchers. Thus, the alphabet was invented around 1800 BC and used by the Canaanites and later by most of the other languages of the world. The now extinct language belongs to the Semitic languages and is related to Hebrew.
The Canaanite languages (also Canaanite languages) are a subgroup of the Semitic languages spoken by the ancient inhabitants of Canaan or the Levant. Most Canaanite languages were already extinct by the end of the first millennium BC; they were mainly supplanted by Aramaic. Only the Hebrew language has been passed down to modern times through the religious scriptures of Judaism.
Source: Krone
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