The oldest alphabet discovered in the ancient city of Syria

What may be the earliest evidence of human alphabetic writing has been carved into a finger-long clay cylinder excavated from a Syrian tomb by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Dating back to around 2400 BC, it predates other known alphabetic scripts by about 500 years, making it difficult to understand where the alphabet came from, how it was shared across societies, and whether it was used in early cities. It would overturn what archaeologists know about what it meant for civilization.

Glenn Schwartz, a professor of archeology at Johns Hopkins University who discovered this clay, said, “The alphabet revolutionized writing by making it available to people beyond royalty and social elites. “It has changed the way we live, think and communicate.” cylinder. “And this new discovery shows that people were experimenting with new communication technologies in different places much earlier than previously imagined.”

Schwartz plans to share details of his findings at the American Overseas Research Association’s annual meeting on Thursday, November 21st.

Schwartz, a Near Eastern archaeologist, studies how early urban areas developed across Syria and how small cities emerged in the region. Together with colleagues from the University of Amsterdam, he co-supervised a 16-year archaeological excavation at Tell Um-el-Mara, one of the first medium-sized cities to emerge in western Syria.

In Umm El Mara, archaeologists have discovered tombs dating back to the early Bronze Age. One of the best-preserved tombs contained six skeletons, gold and silver jewelry, cooking utensils, spear points, and intact ceramic vessels. Next to the pottery, researchers found four lightly fired clay cylinders with alphabet-like letters written on them.

“The cylinder had a hole in it, so I imagine the string could be tied to another object to serve as a label. Maybe it could tell us what was in the container or where it came from. There may be details about who it belongs to,” Schwartz said. . “We have no way to translate the text, so we can only guess.”

Researchers used carbon-14 dating techniques to confirm the age of the graves, artifacts, and writings.

“Until now, scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 B.C.,” Schwartz said. “But our artifacts are older and come from a different region on the map, suggesting that the alphabet may have a very different origin story than we thought.” ”