Canaanite inscription on crest: “May this tusk wipe out lice”

Status: 09.11.2022 1:43 p.m

Israeli researchers are excited about a chance find. They discovered what is probably the oldest complete sentence in the Canaanite language on a lice comb. An archaeologist speaks of a milestone.

Researchers have discovered an inscription thousands of years old on an ivory lice comb in Israel. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) announced that this is the oldest written sentence in Canaanite that has been found in Israel so far.

“May this tusk eradicate the lice in hair and beard,” reads the find. It is dated to around 1700 years BC. “The inscription is direct evidence of the use of the alphabet in everyday life around 3700 years ago. This is a milestone in the history of human ability to write,” says Josef Garfinkel from HU. The archaeologist was involved in the excavations at Lachish.

Even rich people apparently had head lice

Since ivory is a luxury item, the comb is an indication “that even people with high social status suffer from lice”. The researchers assume that the crest was imported from Egypt since there were no elephants in Canaan at the time.

Garfinkel told the AP news agency the finding of the ivory comb in the ancient palace and temple precinct and the mention of the beard may indicate that only wealthy men could read and write at the time. “It’s a very human text,” Garfinkel said. “It shows that humans haven’t really changed, and that lice haven’t really changed.”

The Lachish archaeological site in southern Israel where the comb was found.

Image: AFP

Lice comb is similar to those commonly used today

The small comb is about 3.5 by 2.5 centimeters and was found in 2017, according to the university’s statement. However, the very flat engraved 17 letters were only discovered during post-processing. Details of the find have now been published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.

The comb is therefore similar to lice combs that are commercially available today. On one side it has six thick teeth for untangling hair knots and on the other side remains of 14 fine teeth for removing lice and their eggs. A microscopic examination also found 0.5 to 0.6 millimeter remains of head lice.

First full sentence in Canaanite

Individual words in the Canaanite language had previously been discovered in Israel, but according to the researchers never a complete meaningful sentence. Another peculiarity of the inscription, according to the researchers, is that it refers to the purpose of the object on which it was written, as opposed to inscriptions of dedication or ownership.

The archaic inscription therefore comes from the first phase of the invention of the alphabet. It was developed by the Canaanites around 1800 BC under Egyptian influence and was later used by most of the other languages ​​of the world. The now extinct language belongs to the Semitic languages ​​and is related to Hebrew.

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