Yosef Garfinkel and Michael G. Hasel recently announced the discovery of an ivory lice comb bearing an early Canaanite inscription. The ivory comb, which was discovered in 2016 at Lachish and is 3,700 years old, measures approximately 3.5 × 2.5 cm in size. It once had teeth on both sides, but they were broken off sometime in the past. The inscription consists of a sentence of seven words, made up of 17 letters in early pictographic style, and expresses a desire for the comb to be effective. It reads, “May this tusk root out the lice of the hai[r and the] beard” (see last link below, p. 90). Garfinkel and Hasel are two of the authors of a study on the artifact published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology. In the article, it is asserted that the inscription “for the first time provide[s] us with a complete reliable sentence in a Canaanite dialect, written in the Canaanite script” (see last link, p. 90).
OFF-SITE LINKS:
- https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-721863
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/ivory-lice-comb-a-dating-head-scratcher-may-hold-earliest-canaanite-sentence/
- https://jjar.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/jjar/files/jjar2_art4_lachish_p76-119_2022-10-12_01.pdf
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