JERUSALEM (VINnews) — In a landmark archaeological discovery at the Tel Lachish site southwest of Beit Shemesh, an ancient lice comb contains what is the first known sentence ever to have been written in the Canaanite language, using an ancient alphabet which is the source for many modern languages.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Until recently there were no meaningful Canaanite inscriptions known, except for a few words here and there. The current sentence, dated to 1700 BCE which is the time of Abraham, appears on the ivory comb and is a plea [possibly to Canaanite gods] stating: “may this [ivory] tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”
The comb was dug up at Israel’s Tel Lachish by a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) and Southern Adventist University in Tennessee under the direction of professors Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel and Martin Klingbeil. The inscription was deciphered by semitic epigraphist Dr. Daniel Vainstub at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheba. The ivory was tested by HU Prof. Rivka Rabinovich and BGU Prof. Yuval Goren and found to originate from an elephant tusk.
The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology under the title “A Canaanite’s Wish to Eradicate Lice on an Inscribed Ivory Comb from Lachish.”
The city of Lachish is mentioned in the book of Yehoshua as one of the cities destroyed by him for joining the league against the Givonim. The city later became a central fortified town in the kingdom of Yehuda and was later laid waste by Sancheriv. Currently the site is a national park cared for by the Nature and Parks authority.
The letters of the inscription were engraved in a very shallow manner. It was excavated in 2017, but the letters were noticed only in subsequent post-processing in 2022 by Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu, a research associate at HU’s Institute of Archaeology. It was cleaned and preserved by Miriam Lavi.
The ivory comb is small, measuring roughly 3.5 by 2.5 centimeters. The comb has teeth on both sides. Although their bases are still visible, the comb teeth were broken in ancient times. The central part of the comb is somewhat eroded, possibly by the pressure of fingers holding the comb during haircare or removal of lice from the head or beard. The side of the comb with six thick teeth was used to untangle knots in the hair, while the other side, with 14 fine teeth, was used to remove lice and their eggs, much like the two-sided lice combs sold today in Israeli pharmacies and other stores.
There are 17 Canaanite letters – archaic in form from the first stage of the invention of the alphabet script – on the comb, and they form seven words in Canaanite.
“This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel,” the researchers wrote. “There are Canaanites in Ugarit in Syria, but they write in a different script – not the alphabet that is used today. The Canaanite cities are mentioned in Egyptian documents, the Amarna letters that were written in Akkadian and in the Hebrew Bible.”
The comb’s inscription is direct evidence for the use of the alphabet in daily activities some 3,700 years ago.
“This is a landmark in the history of the human ability to write,” Garfinkel said.
Ancient combs were made from wood, bone or ivory, which was a very expensive material and likely an imported luxury object. As there were no elephants in Canaan during that time period, the comb likely came from nearby Egypt. These factors indicate that even people of high social status suffered from lice.
The research team analyzed the comb for the presence of lice under a microscope, and photographs were taken of both sides. Remains of head lice, 0.5 to 0.6 millimeters in size, were found on the second tooth. The climatic conditions of Lachish, however, did not allow the preservation of whole head lice but only those of the outer chitin (polymer) membrane of the nymph-stage head louse.