World’s oldest ALPHABET is discovered: Ancient 4,400-year-old text is found on clay cylinders from a tomb in Syria – and it upends everything we thought we knew about the origin of writing

For decades, it was widely believed that the ancient Egyptians were responsible for the very first alphabet.

A shocking finding calls this assumption into question, pushing back the age of the first known alphabetic script by about 500 years.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, say that small cylinders made of clay are engraved with the oldest known alphabetic text.

The finger-length cylinders were found in Tell Umm-el Marra, a former city in present-day northwestern Syria that was once a busy intersection of two trade routes.

Carbon dating techniques show that the objects date back 4,400 years to 2,400 B.C. – about 500 years before other known alphabetic scripts.

The cylinders may have been labels for something, for example drinking cups with wine that had to be transported.

According to Glenn Schwartz, a professor of archeology at Johns Hopkins University, the writing could contain names or descriptions of properties.

However, the academic admits that he can ‘only speculate’ what exactly it says.

Before the alphabet, people relied on hieroglyphs, according to Professor Schwartz, who discovered the cylinders in 2004.

“Alphabetic writing changed the way people lived, how they thought, how they communicated,” he said.

‘This new discovery shows that people experimented with new communication technologies much earlier and in a different location than we had imagined.’

Together with colleagues from the University of Amsterdam, the professor led a 16-year archaeological dig at Tell Umm-el Marra, one of the oldest cities of the ancient Near East, located at a crossroads of two trade routes.

In Umm-el Marra, archaeologists have uncovered tombs dating back to the Early Bronze Age – a period stretching from about 3500 to 2000 BC.

One of the best preserved graves contained six skeletons, gold and silver jewelry, cooking utensils, a spearhead, and intact pottery vessels.

Next to the pottery were four of the ‘lightly fired’ clay cylinders or tubes with alphabetical writing on them.

Now the researchers have used carbon-14 dating, a scientific method that can accurately determine the age of organic materials up to 60,000 years.

Using carbon-14 dating techniques, the researchers confirmed the age of the clay cylinders – around 2400 BC, or about 4400 years ago

The finger-length cylinders were found in Tell Umm-el Marra, a former city in present-day northwestern Syria that was once a busy intersection of two trade routes.

What is Tell Umm-el Marra?

Tell Umm-el Marra is a former city in present-day northwestern Syria.

Umm el-Marra was founded around 2700 BC, in the first part of the Early Bronze Age.

It is one of the oldest cities of the ancient Near East, located at the crossroads of two trade routes.

The rate of decay of carbon-14, a carbon isotope, is constant and easy to measure, making it ideal for providing age estimates for anything older than 300 years.

The technique confirmed the age of the graves, the artifacts and the script, which is half a century older than other alphabetic scripts.

“Scientists used to think that the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BC,” Professor Schwartz said.

“But our artifacts are older and from a different area of ​​the map, which suggests the alphabet has a very different origin story than we thought.”

As for the nature of the cylinders, the academic believes they may have been early and more primitive versions of today’s labels.

He suspects that they may have been strung aboard the ships to identify something about them, whether it be their contents, their owner, or their origin or destination.

“The cylinders were perforated, so I imagine a string attaching them to another object and acting as a label,” Professor Schwartz said.

‘They may provide details about the contents of a ship, or perhaps where the ship came from, or who it belonged to.

In Umm-el Marra, archaeologists have uncovered tombs dating back to the Early Bronze Age, a period stretching from about 3500 to 2000 BC. One of the best preserved graves contained six skeletons, gold and silver jewelry, cooking utensils, a spearhead and intact pottery vessels

“Without the means to translate the writing, we can only speculate.”

The generally accepted theory of the origin of the alphabet dates back to a group of illiterate ancient Egyptian miners in 1900 BC.

Inspired by the hieroglyphs they saw around them, the immigrant workers forged letters for their own Semitic language, based on the shapes of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

It eventually spread to the Levant – the eastern Mediterranean region of western Asia – around 1300 BC.

From there it began to spread around the Mediterranean, eventually developing into the Greek and Latin alphabets.

Before there was an alphabet, earlier writing systems, such as hieroglyphs, were “extremely difficult to learn,” said Professor Schwartz.

“Thousands of symbols were used in very complicated ways, which meant that only a very small group of people could ever learn to write or read,” he said.

‘With the invention of the alphabet it meant that a much larger number of people could theoretically learn to read and write – ultimately leading to the democratization of writing.

In 2006, Egyptologist Orly Goldwasser argued that symbols (pictured) on artifacts excavated from a temple in Sinai in 1905 are prototypes of the letters we use to write today.

“And of course this is the system that all Western European writing systems used, because the Greeks, who had borrowed the Semitic alphabetic system, then used it to write their own language.”

Professor Schwartz has long published the discovery of the cylinders, which were found in one of the Early Bronze Age strata.

But carbon dating provides more convincing evidence that alphabetic writing began 500 years earlier than previously thought.

Professor Schwartz will share details of his discovery on Thursday (November 21) at the annual meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research at Hilton Boston Park Plaza, Massachusetts.