The oldest known sentence is possibly written on this ancient lice comb

Researchers have unearthed and even translated an ancient ivory comb which apparently contains the oldest known sentence.

It's written in the Canaanite alphabet, a language of people of lands believed to have included parts of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. It is also a language that spawned modern language systems, such as Arabic and Hebrew.

The ancient comb dates back to around 1700BCE and the inscription on it read: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard!" The team of researchers said that it's a spell to eradicate beard lice.

The comb is basically telling the people to comb their hair and beards to get rid of lice, and after Israeli archaeologists found it at Tel Lachish in Israel, it seems the hair-related issues were since the bronze age.

Professor Yosef Garfinkel, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said: "This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel. This is a landmark in the history of the human ability to write."

Prof Garfinkel further said, "The inscription is very human. You have a comb and on the comb you have a wish to destroy lice on the hair and beard. Nowadays we have all these sprays and modern medicines and poisons. In the past they didn’t have those."

Notably, the comb was discovered in 2017 at the site in south-central Israel. The inscriptions were spotted by the team researcher in December last year and were deciphered by Semitic epigraphist Dr Daniel Vainstub.

In the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, the researcher noted that the letters spell out seven words that form the first completely deciphered sentence in a Canaanite dialect.

Professor Garfinkel explained: "There are Canaanites in Ugarit in Syria, but they write in a different script, not the alphabet that is used till today. The Canaanite cities are mentioned in Egyptian documents, the Amarna letters that were written in Akkadian, and in the Hebrew Bible. The comb inscription is direct evidence for the use of the alphabet in daily activities some 3,700 years ago."

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