Carved in clay

Oldest alphabet in the world discovered in Syria?

The characters were discovered on small clay cylinders about the length of a finger (image).

(Bild: Johns Hopkins University)

In Syria, archaeologists have discovered what may be the oldest evidence of alphabetic writing - abstract characters carved into four small clay plates. They are around 4400 years old and could represent an early form of the alphabet, they report.

According to the website of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (US state of Maryland), the findings suggest that the script discovered on small, finger-length clay cylinders could be around 500 years older than all other known scripts.

Clay cylinder found in a grave
The researchers led by Glenn Schwartz found the clay cylinders with the characters in a grave in the Syrian Bronze Age city of Umm-el-Marra. The writing is dated to around 2400 BC. "This new discovery shows that people were experimenting with new communication technologies much earlier and in a different place than we previously imagined," Schwartz is quoted as saying on the university's website.

(Bild: Johns Hopkins University)

Writing could not yet be deciphered
"The cylinders were perforated, so I imagine a string was used to attach them to another object. They probably served as a label. Perhaps they provide information about the contents of a vessel, perhaps also about where the vessel came from or who it belonged to," explains Schwartz. "But without a way to translate the writing, we can only speculate."

"Until now, scholars have assumed that the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BC," says Schwartz. "But our artifacts are older and come from a different area on the map, suggesting that the alphabet has a very different origin story than we thought."