A recently discovered inscription on an ivory comb is said to be the earliest example of a sentence written using an alphabet that would eventually evolve into a set of 26 letters.
The fine-toothed instrument was unearthed several years ago in Tel Lachish, an old Canaanite city in the foothills of central Israel, but scientists only recently realized it was engraved with 17 tiny letters.
The seven separate words, "yt lqml [r w]zqt", are roughly translated to "may this tusk root out the hair on the beard"
The first reliable sentence archaeologists have found in a Canaanite dialect is believed to be the hopeful message.
The Phoenician alphabet is the earliest example of an alphabet that would be adapted and adopted by cultures all over the globe.
Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Russian are some of the ancient letters that make up the modern alphabet.
The system of radicals and symbols used in Chinese writing doesn't contribute to a phonetic foundation of words like it does in other countries.
There are many examples of isolated letters, but none have been strung together into something meaningful.
Yosef Garfinkel is an archeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
There are people in Syria who write in a different script than the one used today. Some 3,700 years ago, the use of the alphabet in daily activities was proven by the comb inscription. This is a big deal in the history of writing.
The comb is only 3.66 centimeters long and 2.51 centimeters wide.
It has a small inscription on its body. There are some letters that are small. Others have faded to the point where they are difficult to understand without their neighbors.
There are remnants of six large teeth on one side of the comb and remnants of 14 fine teeth on the other side.
The tooth was found to have the hard exterior of a head louse. This isn't the oldest evidence of head louse ever found, but it does suggest that even wealthy Canaanites were annoyed by these parasites.
The ivory used to make the comb was most likely imported from elephants in Egypt and destined for a rich person. According to the findings, the wealthy classes of ancient Jerusalem had head lice so bad that a special comb was used to eradicate them.
Spells and hexes have been written in the Canaanite alphabet before, but most curses are directed towards humans and other inscriptions found on a jar at the same archaeological site date back to 1200 or 1400 BC.
There are other examples of curses and hexes written in Canaanite letters. Similar inscriptions have been found on a jar from the same dig site as the comb.
The inscription on the comb was probably written hundreds of years ago.
Based on other artifacts found in the same area, researchers believe the comb was written in the Bronze Age, about 3,700 years ago.
According to experts, the words were written in the very early stages of the alphabet's development, not long after the Canaanite alphabet came to be.
It didn't take long for us to start talking about things that were bothering us.
The study was published in a journal.
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