A 7-word carving on a 3,700-year-old comb has been described as the oldest written alphabetic sentence in any human language.
A new one research I was told that the phrase written on the ivory comb is from the Canaanite language.
The Canaanite language was the source of the Latin language spoken in present-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
The comb mentioned in the sentence is a problem that is causing concern even for modern parents, head lice, because according to the writing, this comb may remove lice from the head and beard.
Parts of the Canaanite alphabet have been identified through rhymes and symbols, but this is the first time scientists have discovered a complete sentence.
According to Hebrew University researchers, it is the first alphabetic language and therefore the discovery marks a milestone in the history of human writing ability.
He said that this has never been discovered before, it is not a royal decree of a king but a phrase expressing the common problem of human beings.
It is believed that the first writing system was developed 5 thousand years ago by the ancient Sumerian civilization of Iraq.
Like ancient Egypt, this writing system was pictorial rather than alphabetic, and hundreds of different images represented words, ideas, and sounds.
Canaanite was the first language to use letters to represent a writing system, researchers said, and this system gradually became the source of many different languages.
He said the Canaanites invented the alphabet and today everyone in the world reads or writes using the alphabetic system, so it was one of the most important human achievements.
This comb was discovered in 2016 but the writing was not known at that time.
In 2021, a researcher zoomed in on an iPhone photo of the comb and saw writing, which led to research.
The results of this research were published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.
