Dating back to around 2,400 BC, the inscriptions predate all other known alphabets, according to Professor Glenn Schwartz of Johns Hopkins University.
“Alphabets revolutionized writing by making it accessible to people beyond royalty and the socially elite. Alphabetic writing changed the way people lived, how they thought, how they communicated,” Professor Schwartz said.
“And this new discovery shows that people were experimenting with new communication technologies much earlier and in a different location than we had imagined before now.”
Alphabetic inscriptions are carved into finger-sized clay cylinders discovered at Tell Umm-el Marra, one of the earliest medium-sized urban centers to emerge in western Syria.
At this site, archaeologists uncovered tombs from the Early Bronze Age.
One of the most well-preserved tombs contained six skeletons, along with gold and silver jewelry, cookware, a spearhead, and intact pottery vessels.
Beside the pottery, researchers also found four lightly baked clay cylinders bearing what appears to be alphabetic writing.
“The cylinders were perforated, so I’m imagining a string tethering them to another object to act as a label,” Professor Schwartz said.
“Maybe they detail the contents of a vessel, or maybe where the vessel came from, or who it belonged to.”
“Without a means to translate the writing, we can only speculate.”
Using carbon-14 dating, scientists determined the ages of the tombs, artifacts, and the inscriptions on the clay cylinders.
“Previously, scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BCE,” Professor Schwartz said.
“But our artifacts are older and from a different area on the map, suggesting the alphabet may have an entirely different origin story than we thought.”
Professor Schwartz presented his findings at the annual meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR 2024).
