Archaeologists have discovered and partially deciphered a lost alphabet created by a biblical civilization 3,000 years ago. Photo

-Archaeologists have finally tracked down a lost alphabet created by a biblical civilization 3,000 years ago. The find has surprised scientists for decades and stimulated clues.

Since 1964, archaeologists have found tablets with strange carvings at the site of an ancient settlement in Jordan. A total of 15 different ancient artifacts have been dug up, which so far have not been able to decipher, writes DailyMail.

Canaanite people

Thanks to a new analysis, archaeologists have discovered that the tablets found were likely made by the Canaanites, an indigenous group that flourished in the Middle East until the second half of the 13th century BC.

The Canaanites are known to have lived in the Promised Land from 3500 B.C. to 1200 B.C. before they were conquered by Israelite tribes after their exit from Egypt. This nation is mentioned several times in the Old Testament.

The Israelites fought a series of wars against the Canaanites and finally conquered most of their land. This conquest took place in the second half of the 13th century BC.

But before that, during the Bronze Age, the Canaanites lived throughout modern Israel, Gaza, the west bank of the Jordan River, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Syria. And the enigmatic clay tablets date from this time.

Mysterious clay tablets

Research by scientists found that the text on the ancient tablets was written from left to right. It contained 29 unique symbols in the form of dots, vertical stripes and other abstract designs.

The writing is similar to Proto-Sinaitic script, a Middle Bronze Age writing system that may have been the ancestor of this alphabet.

The characters are also similar to proto-Khanaan alphabets that have been found at other Late Bronze Age excavation sites. They were created by people familiar with ancient Egyptian writing.

But the tablets also showed some unique combinations of signs. Scientists identified the sign as "ayin," which is also the Hebrew word for "eye."

These parallels and patterns helped scientists parse the meaning of the tablets' symbols and begin to decipher their secret message. In particular, analyzing them along with a later Hebrew grammar that preserved earlier Canaanite forms, it turned out that the tablets seem to contain "short ritual sayings" and "poetic proverbs."

Researchers hypothesized that the inscriptions represent short cultic proverbs associated with the temple in which they were found. The religious building was located in an ancient settlement called Deir Allah in the center of the Jordan Valley. However, the temple was destroyed and burned thousands of years ago.

But researchers will have to do further research to fully translate them. And this is not easy, since alphabetic writing was actually used by small groups of scribes and may have been concentrated only in the temples. This would mean that the tablets from Deir Allah are the last remnant of the writing practice established in temples throughout Canaan before it collapsed.

The research team also found pottery among the ruins (cups and ceremonial vessels), as well as armor. And the scientists also unearthed sculptures that were a gift from Egyptian Queen Tusret, which allowed them to determine the approximate date of the temple's destruction - 1180 BC.

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