In the arid lands of eastern Aleppo, the archaeological site of Tell Umm-el Marra has just revealed an extraordinary secret. Excavations carried out over sixteen years (1994-2010) by an international team of archaeologists uncovered four clay cylinders which could rewrite the history of alphabetical writing. These findings were compiled in the book Animals, Ancestors and Ritual in Early Bronze Age Syria: An Elite Mortuary Complex from Umm el-Marrasearchable on the Harvard University website.
The silent guardians of time
In the heart of ancient Syria, Tell Umm-el Marra stands as a witness to a time when the first city-states began to flourish in the Fertile Crescent. This urban colony, established around 2700 BCE, bears witness to the emergence of the first complex societies in Northern Mesopotamia. Archaeologists have unearthed a remarkably preserved burial there, a true time capsule from the Early Bronze Age.
Funerary furniture reflects the sophistication of this society: finely crafted gold and silver jewelry demonstrates mastery of metallurgical techniques, bronze spear points demonstrate an established military organization, while elaborately patterned pottery reveals a thriving local crafts. But among these sumptuous treasures, four small clay cylinders, modest in appearance, have just overturned our understanding of history.
These cylinders, meticulously perforated, bear inscriptions whose importance goes far beyond their apparent simplicity. The inscriptions they bear resemble neither Sumerian pictograms nor contemporary Egyptian hieroglyphs. Their graphic simplicity and their limited number suggest a radically new approach to writing, perhaps the first attempt at an alphabetical system.
A chronological and geographical upheaval
Dated to 2400 BCE, these artifacts predate the alleged invention of the alphabet by five centuries. Until now, specialists placed this innovation around 1900 BC, attributing it to workers coming from Canaan (a region which approximately corresponds to the combined current territories of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, western Jordan and Syria) working in Egypt.
Indeed, it is, today, widely accepted that the first alphabets were born in the Near East, in the Semitic world, around the 2nd millennium BC. The Phoenicians (part of the Canaanites), a people of Semitic traders, are often cited as the first to have developed a fully alphabetical writing systemaround the 14th century BC. This alphabet was then adopted and adapted by many other civilizations: the Greeks and Romans, in particular.
This chronology, firmly anchored in the historiographytoday finds itself shaken. Tell Umm-el Marra, located at the crossroads of ancient trade routes, now appears as a possible center of scriptural innovation. This strategic position could have favored the emergence of new modes of communication, meeting the needs of growing commercial exchanges.
If the alphabet was born in Syria and not in Egypt, our theories on the diffusion of cultural innovations in Antiquity therefore require a thorough review. The researchers from Johns Hopkins and Amsterdam universities, at the origin of this work, are however cautious: the inscriptions on the cylinders remain undeciphered, leaving doubt about their exact nature. Was this writing system destined to evolve into a more complex alphabet, or was it a dead end in the history of writing?
While archaeologists continue their investigations in the regionthe hope remains of discovering other traces of this possible first alphabetical writing, to shed more light on this little-known chapter of the history of human communication.
- Clay cylinders dating back to 2,400 BC BC, discovered at Tell Umm-el Marra in Syria, could represent the oldest attempt at alphabetical writing.
- These artifacts thus call into question the geographical and chronological origin of the alphabet, traditionally attributed to Egypt around 1900 BC. AD
- The inscriptions nevertheless remain undeciphered, leaving open the question of their role in the evolution of writing.
