This is the Oldest Sentence in the World’s First Alphabet – New Archeological Finding
The archeologist, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University, presents his exciting new finding: the earliest known sentence written in the first Alphabet. The sentence is incised on an ivory comb.
Prof. Yosef Garfinkel and his colleagues unearthed the comb at the archaeological site of Lachish, an old Canaanite city in the foothills of central Israel. It was found in a layer of the site dating back roughly 2700 years, but from the style of the writing engraved on the comb, Garfinkel argues this artefact is about 1000 years older.
Together, the barely discernible markings form seven separate words, “ytš ḥṭ ḏ lqml śʿ[r w]zqt”, which translates to “May this tusk root out the lice of the hai[r and the] beard”. The message is the first reliable sentence archaeologists have found in a Canaanite dialect.
This finding is so important, because the Canaanite script (known also as the Phoenician alphabet) is the earliest known example of an alphabet, one that would be adapted and adopted by cultures all over the globe.