The comb was first excavated in 2016 at Tel Lachish, an archaeological site in southern Israel, but it was only late last year when a professor at Israel's Hebrew University noticed the tiny words inscribed on it.
The lead researcher, Hebrew University archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel, told The Associated Press that while many artefacts bearing the Canaanite script have been found over the years, this is the first complete sentence to be discovered.
The find also opens up room for debate about the ancient era, Garfinkel added. The fact that the sentence was found on an ivory comb in the ancient city's palace and temple district, coupled with the mentioning of the beard, could indicate that only wealthy men were able to read and write. Canaanites spoke an ancient Semitic language - related to modern Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic - and resided in the lands abutting the eastern Mediterranean. They are believed to have developed the first known alphabetic system of writing.
He said experts dated the script to 1700 B.C. by comparing it to the archaic Canaanite alphabet previously found in Egypt's Sinai desert, dating back to between 1900 B.C. and 1700 B.C.
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