A team of Austrian and Israeli archaeologists working the fertile ground of the famed Tel Lachish site in central Israel made a discovery that has altered existing theories about how the first alphabetic script was transmitted from ancient Egypt to other parts of the world. While exploring architectural ruins previously unearthed at this ancient site, they found a piece of a ceramic bowl that had been inscribed with two lines of short written text. Closer analysis of the inscription revealed the existence of previously unseen letter variations, which meant the archaeologists had discovered a new form of alphabetic script. Their findings and their theories will be published in Antiquity.
Radiocarbon dating of ancient barley grains found together with the ceramic pot sherd revealed that this particular script had its origin in the Late Bronze Age, or more specifically in the 15 th century BC. This was significant since no examples of written alphabetic script from this period had ever before been recovered.
