3,700-year-old ivory comb found inscribed with a 'spell' to eradicate beard lice

A picture taken at the conservation laboratory of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on November 8, 2022, shows an ivory comb with a rare inscription that sheds new light on the use of Canaanite language some 3,700 years ago.

“May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.” This may just be the world's oldest sentence which was found inscribed an 3,700-year-old ivory comb in southern Israel.

The comb was found at the Tel Lachish site in 2017, but the 17 letters in Canaanite language were not noticed until earlier this year following further examination, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said in a statement.

The artefact provides "direct evidence" of the use of the Canaanite alphabet in daily life, said Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeology professor at Hebrew University.

"This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel," Garfinkel noted, calling it "a landmark in the history of the human ability to write". According to Sky News, researchers also believed that the sentence inscribed onto the comb was a "spell" to "root out lice".

“Nothing like this was found before. It’s not the royal inscription of a king … this is something very human. You’re immediately connected to this person who had this comb,” he said.

Garfinkel added that Canaanites were the first to use letters that represented sounds in their writing system, which evolved into the Phoenician, Greek and then the Latin alphabet that’s most commonly used today.

“The Canaanites invented the alphabet. … Nowadays every person in the world can read and write using the alphabet system. This is really one of the most important intellectual achievement of humankind,” he told CNN. “When you are writing in English, you’re really using Canaanite.”

An aerial picture shows the Tel Lachish archeological site, a key Canaanite city about 40 kilometres southwest of Jerusalem.

Lachish, about 40 kilometres southwest of Jerusalem, was a key Canaanite city. Archaeologists have found 10 inscriptions there, but the comb marks the first "entire verbal sentence" written in the language spoken by the inhabitants of ancient Lachish, Hebrew University of Jerusalem stated.

It noted the comb itself was likely an imported luxury object, as there were no elephants in Canaan, and therefore no ivory.

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