Evidence of oldest known alphabet unearthed among Syrian tomb treasures

Clay cylinders that are 4,400 years old, unearthed from a tomb in Syria, are inscribed with traces of the earliest known alphabetic writing system. The tomb, discovered in Umm el-Marra in 2004, contained four of these finger-sized cylinders, engraved with eight distinct symbols. Although the characters do not correspond to a known language, archaeologist Glenn Schwartz analysed the inscriptions and suggested that the symbols represent sounds that correspond to a, i, k, l, n, s and y. The inscriptions might record people’s names or label objects in the tomb, Schwartz says.