A few months ago, in November 2022, scientists managed to decode the oldest sentence that has been found written in an alphabet and not in hieroglyphs, the other pictographic-pictorial form

Inscribed on a 3,700-year-old ivory comb found in southern Israel is the phrase: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and beard.”

The ancient comb was found in 2016 in the area of ​​Tel Lachish – the second most important city in the Biblical Kingdom of Judah – and is engraved with 17 letters of the Phoenician alphabet used in 1700 BC (since the find is dated) by the “Canaanites” or Canaanites.

“Most people laugh when you tell them what the inscription actually says,” one of the archaeologists, Michael Hasel of Southern Adventist University in Tennessee, told the New York Times.

But, although it speaks of lice, the message – “wish” of the comb was considered very important, especially for parents of young children.

Ancient Canaan (or Canaan) was the area roughly corresponding to present-day Israel/Palestine and including the West Bank, western Jordan, southern Syria and Lebanon to the borders of present-day Turkey