The Hebrew University has discovered an ivory comb from 1700 BCE that is inscribed with a plea to rid oneself of lice. The inscription reads: 'May this [ivory] tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.' The alphabet was developed around 1800 BCE and was used by the Canaanites and later, m
. The ivory was tested by Professors Rivka Rabinovich and Yuval Goren and was found to have come from an elephant tusk. The team’s findings were published in theThe 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. It was cleaned and preserved by Miriam Lavi.The ivory comb is small, measuring roughly 3.5 by 2.5 cm. The comb has teeth on both sides.
“This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel. 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 inscription is direct evidence of the use of the alphabet in daily activities some 3700 years ago.
The research team analyzed the comb itself for the presence of lice under a microscope and photographs were taken of both sides. Remains of head lice, 0.5–0.6 mm 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 membrane of the nymph stage head louse.
Third, this is the first discovery in the region of an inscription referring to the purpose of the object on which it was written, as opposed to dedicatory or ownership inscriptions on objects. Further, the engraver’s skill in successfully executing such tiny letters is a fact that from now on should be taken into account in any attempt to summarize and draw conclusions on literacy in Canaan in the Bronze Age.
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