2 years ago
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It’s a elemental condemnation that captures the hopes and fears of modern-day parents arsenic overmuch arsenic the bronze property Canaanite who owned the doubled-edged ivory comb connected which the words appear.
Believed to beryllium the oldest known condemnation written successful the earliest alphabet, the inscription connected the luxury point reads: “May this tusk basal retired the lice of the hairsbreadth and the beard.”
Unearthed successful Lachish, a Canaanite metropolis authorities successful the 2nd millennium BCE and the 2nd astir important metropolis successful the kingdom of Judah, the comb suggests that humans person endured lice for thousands of years and that adjacent the wealthiest were not spared the grim infestations.
“The inscription is precise human,” said Prof Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeologist astatine the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who helped nonstop the Lachish excavations. “You person a comb and connected the comb you person a privation to destruct lice connected the hairsbreadth and beard. Nowadays we person each these sprays and modern medicines and poisons. In the past they didn’t person those.”
The comb, which measures 3.5cm by 2.5cm, was discovered astatine the tract successful 2017, but the shallow engravings connected the aboveground were lone spotted successful December past year. Analysis of the markings confirmed the penning to beryllium Canaanite script, the earliest alphabet, which was invented astir 3,800 years ago.
Efforts to get an property for the comb from c dating proved futile, but researchers judge it was made astir 1700 BCE. The comb is worn and has mislaid its teeth, but the remaining stumps amusement that it erstwhile bore six wide spaced teeth for removing hairsbreadth tangles connected 1 side, and 14 narrowly spaced teeth for removing lice and eggs connected the other.
Further grounds for the comb’s intent came erstwhile researchers examined it nether a microscope and identified the pugnacious outer membranes of fractional millimetre-long nymph stages of caput lice.
The letters connected the comb spell retired 7 words that signifier the archetypal wholly deciphered condemnation successful a Canaanite dialect, written successful Canaanite script, said the researchers successful the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.
Ancient combs were made from wood, bony and ivory, but the second would person been expensive, imported luxuries. There were nary elephants successful Canaan astatine the time.
The world’s archetypal penning systems originated successful Mesopotamia and Egypt astir 3200 BCE, but these were not alphabetic. They relied connected hundreds of antithetic signs to correspond words oregon syllables and arsenic specified required years to master, said Christopher Rollston, prof of northwest Semitic languages astatine George Washington University successful the US.
The earliest alphabet was invented astir 1800 BCE by Semitic-speaking radical who were acquainted with the Egyptian penning system, said Rollston. Known arsenic Canaanite oregon aboriginal alphabetic the strategy was utilized for hundreds of years, peculiarly successful the Levant, and was standardised by the Phoenicians successful past Lebanon. It went connected to go the instauration for past Greek, Latin and astir modern languages successful Europe today.
“The information that this inscription is astir mean beingness is particularly fascinating,” Rollston said. “Throughout quality past lice person been a perennial problem. And this inscription nicely reveals that adjacent the affluent and celebrated successful past times were not exempt from specified problems. We tin lone anticipation that this inscribed comb was utile successful doing that which it says it was expected to bash – basal retired immoderate of these pesky insects.”
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