4,400-Year-Old Finger-Length Clay Cylinders Etched With Oldest Known Alphabet Discovered in Ancient Syrian City

Researchers believe they have found evidence related to the first instance of alphabetic writing in human history in an ancient Syrian city. Scholars from Johns Hopkins University unearthed four finger-length clay cylinders marked with several symbols in Tell Umm-el Marra, Arkeonews reported.

Experts believe that the inscription was of alphabets belonging to an ancient writing system, yet to be deciphered by modern linguists. Before this finding the first known alphabet was dated back to around 1900 B.C.E., but if the assertions of the Johns Hopkins University research team regarding the found inscription, turn out to be true, this means that the alphabet entered human society much before.

The cylinders were uncovered in 2004, and their discovery was announced by Johns Hopkins archeologist, Glenn Schwartz, in 2021, Smithsonian Magazine reported. They were found in a tomb alongside other artifacts. Each cylinder had a hole in it, which experts believe people could have used to attach it to something. The finding came into focus again when Schwartz talked about the unknown writing system at the annual meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research.

Schwartz stated that per the available evidence, researchers believe that the alphabet was invented around 1900 B.C.E. The clay cylinders were made around 2400 B.C.E., as per radiocarbon dating. This implies that the cylinders are 500 years older than the supposed first-known alphabetic series. Not only that, but the cylinders' place of origin is also distinct from where the roots of the first known alphabets were laid—the Sinai Peninsula. 

According to Schwartz, all of this evidence indicates that the alphabets found on the clay, do not belong to the Proto-Sinaitic script—the writing system credited with transforming writing from symbols to alphabets. Judging by the age of clay cylinders, this unknown writing system is around five centuries older than the Proto-Sinaitic script, making it the older alphabetic series in human history. This finding if proven to be valid, will shift the way language development in human society is perceived by experts.

Schwartz believes it is essential for humans to understand the alphabet's history, because of the impact these elements have had in their communication development, Smithsonian Magazine reported. Before the alphabet, the writing system used symbols to showcase objects or phonetic sounds. Alphabets helped humans jump forward by leaps and bounds, in terms of connecting and how they went about preserving their history.

"Alphabets revolutionized writing by making it accessible to people beyond royalty and the social elite," Schwartz said. "Alphabetic writing changed the way people lived, how they thought, how they communicated."