Oldest legible sentence written with first alphabet is about head lice

The person is Colin Barras.

An ivory comb has the oldest readable sentence written on it. The words are written in letters 1 to 3 millimetres wide and are meant to be used as a plea.

Around 5200 years ago, writing began in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The early writing systems were non-Alphabetic. The alphabet didn't come right away. It is thought to have been invented in or near Egypt, where ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were used to create the familiar alphabetic letters.

There is no archaeological evidence that supports the earliest history of the alphabet. There is some evidence that the alphabet was in use as early as 4300 years ago, but it isn't clear when the invention of the alphabet happened. The earliest texts we have found are very short and hard to read. The inscription on the comb is crucial.

The comb was unearthed by Yosef Garfinkel and his team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The style of writing engraved on the comb is 1000 years older than the level of the site that it came from.

Two of the letters were damaged. The earliest known sentence in the alphabet is 400 years old.

It is a significant discovery according to Christopher Rollston. He says that early alphabetic inscriptions are usually just a few letters long and usually include the name of a person or an object. There are a few longer inscriptions from the same time period as the comb, but researchers can't read them because they don't know what the text was about.

Rollston says that it was easier for Garfinkel's team to read the inscription because it was carved on a comb that still has some of the body parts of dead animals. Rollston insists that this is still a brilliant decipherment.

The inscription is about ordinary life. Rollston says that there have been a lot of problems with lice. We can only hope that this comb was useful in helping to remove some of the insects that are bothering us.

The Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology can be found in the journal section.

The revolution in archaeology and human evolution is covered in Our Human Story.