During excavations in Syria, archaeologists have discovered several clay cylinders with mysterious, abstract symbols on them in a Bronze Age grave. According to dating, these tablets were created around 4,400 years ago. Based on its shape and context, the researchers suspect that it could be an early form of alphabetic characters. If this is confirmed, these clay cylinders would be the oldest known evidence of alphabetic writing to date.
The alphabet and writing are commonplace today, but how this communication developed via abstract letter symbols is only partially understood. It is known that around 5,000 years ago people in various cultures developed the first writing systems almost at the same time – on the Indus the still undeciphered script of the Harappa culture, in Mesopotamia the cuneiform, in Egypt the hieroglyphs and on Crete two writing systems – both hieroglyphs and more abstract ones Sign. But all of these writings were still pictorial or symbolic representations of certain objects or syllable sounds.
When did the first alphabetic writing appear?
This is different with the alphabet: its letter symbols are not a mere simplification of originally pictorial symbols and semantic units. Instead, each letter represents a specific sound in the spoken language. Only through their sequence does a word and a meaning emerge. Our alphabet has its origins in the Levant. There, people from early Semitic cultures first developed a real alphabet under the influence of Egypt and West Asian writing. This consisted of characters that still appear in the Hebrew script today and that served as abstract letters. The name “Alphabet” goes back to the first letters “Aleph” and “Bet” of this script.
The oldest evidence of alphabetic and proto-alphabetic characters to date comes from Tel Lachish in southern Israel. There, archaeologists found a 3,450-year-old ceramic shard with early alphabetic characters and an around 3,700-year-old ivory comb with an entire sentence in alphabetical script. But now archaeologists led by Glenn Schwartz have found even older evidence of alphabetic writing – in Syria. These are four clay cylinders with carved characters from the Bronze Age city of Tell Umm-el-Marra. Located on an important trade route between the Mediterranean and the nearby city of Aleppo and Mesopotamia, this city was an important cultural and economic center of this region from the early Bronze Age.
Characters from the Bronze Age grave
In the remains of Umm-el-Marra, archaeologists discovered several graves richly furnished with grave goods from the early Bronze Age around 2400 BC. In addition to the bones of the dead, there were gold and silver jewelry, cooking utensils, a spearhead and intact clay vessels. “This suggests that this grave complex was reserved for high-ranking members of society, and perhaps it even served as a royal cemetery,” explain Schwartz and his colleagues. In one of the graves they came across four pieces of fired clay, each around four centimeters long. There are characters carved on them that archaeologists interpret as possible early forms of alphabetic writing.
If this is confirmed, these clay cylinders would be the oldest evidence of alphabetic writing to date. “This discovery shows that people were experimenting with new forms of communication much earlier than we could previously imagine,” says Schwartz. The clay tablets are more than 500 years older than all previous finds. However, archaeologists do not yet know what these signs mean. “The clay cylinders had a hole in them, so I suspect that they could be tied to other objects with a string as a kind of label,” explains Schwartz. “Perhaps the characters describe the contents of a vessel, where it came from or who it belonged to. Without a decipherment and translation of the scriptures, we can only speculate.”
Source: American Society of Overseas Research’s Annual Meeting, 2024, Johns Hopkins University