Archaeologists in Israel say they have found the first-known written sentence in Canaanite, an alphabet used by the long-ago inhabitants of the region and until now lost to time.
The sentence—comprising 17 Canaanite characters, totaling seven words—was incised on an ivory comb carved from an elephant tusk. It says: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”
The comb was found on the site of Tel Lachish, a Bronze Age settlement about 25 miles from Jerusalem. It’s about 1.38 inches by 0.98 inches, though its teeth have long since broken off. Details of the script’s characters and meaning were published today in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.
“This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel,” said Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a co-author of the study, in a university release. “There are Canaanites in Ugarit in Syria, but they write in a different script, not the alphabet that is used till today.”
In an email to Gizmodo, Garfinkel added that the comb was likely made in Egypt and then brought to Tel Lachish, where a local inscribed the delousing plea.
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