Ancient comb bears the oldest known sentence in Cannanite, the earliest alphabet

On the comb, the archaeologists identified 17 tiny Canaanite letters that wished the comb to rid the user of lice.

Archaeologists have found the oldest sentence written in Canaanite—the earliest known alphabetical system— carved into an ivory comb. The engraving is a wish for the user to be rid of lice from hair by using the comb.

The comb was found in Tel Lachish, Israel in 2017, by a team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Southern Adventist University, U.S., however, the inscription was discovered as late as December of 2021 as the carving was extremely faint. 

The study, published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, says that the comb is a small, worn structure measuring about 3.5 by 2.5 cm with only the stumps of teeth and the base remaining. Much like modern-day two-sided combs, one side had six thick teeth to untangle knots while the other side had fourteen fine teeth to root out lice and their eggs. 

On the comb, the archaeologists identified 17 tiny Canaanite letters that read “May this tusk root out lice of the hair and the beard.” 

Canaan was an ancient civilisation that flourished in present-day Israel in the Late Bronze Age around 1400 BC. Lachish was a major Canaanite city-state in the second millennium BC. They developed an alphabetical system of writing around 1800 BC. 

The style of writing on the comb is primitive and still in the early stages of development of the alphabet, says the study. 

“This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel. There are Canaanites in Ugarit in Syria, but they write in a different script, not the alphabet that is used till today. The Canaanite cities are mentioned in Egyptian documents, the Amarna letters that were written in Akkadian, and in the Hebrew Bible. The comb inscription is direct evidence for the use of the alphabet in daily activities some 3,700 years ago. This is a landmark in the history of the human ability to write,” said Yosef Garfinkel, one of the authors of the study, in a press release.