3,700-year-old rare Canaanite inscription discovered in Israel

Israeli researchers have discovered a 3,700-year-old inscription on an ivory head-lice comb in Israel.

This is the oldest known written Canaanite language sentence to date, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) reported on Wednesday.

The inscription dates back to around 1700 BC: "may this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."

One HU archaeologist who was involved in the excavations, Josef Garfinkel, called the discovery a "milestone in the history of the human ability to write." He said, "the inscription is direct evidence of the use of the alphabet in daily life" back then.

Garfinkel also said the finding suggests that even people of high social status suffered from lice, as ivory was a very expensive material at the time.

The small comb measures about 3.5 by 2.5 centimeters and was already found in 2017, according to the university. However, the inscription was only discovered this year during post-processing.

Individual words in the Canaanite language have been discovered in Israel before, but never a complete, meaningful sentence, said the researchers.

Invented around 1800 BC, the alphabet was used by the Canaanites and later by most other languages of the world. Today, the extinct language belongs to the Semitic languages and is related to Hebrew.