BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

News in the History of the Alphabet

Lachish yields small inscription with big implications

Multispectral images of the potsherd with inscription. Courtesy Daniel Vainstub et al., “A Late Bronze Age Canaanite Jar Inscription from the 2025 Excavation Season at Lachish,” JJAR (2026), CC-BY 4.0. Photos by Shai Halevi.

A newly published 12^th-century BCE jar inscription from Lachish preserves a personal name containing the root š-l-ṭ, centuries earlier than this root was believed to be in use in the region. Further, the text is written using the standardized Linear Canaanite alphabet, representing a stage prior to its division in the Iron Age into distinct regional scripts such as Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic. In addition to its content and script, the Lachish inscription is also unusual because it was written in ink on pottery (rather than being inscribed in stone).

Because the inscription is fragmentary and faded, researchers used multispectral imaging to enhance the surviving ink traces and clarify the letter forms. Inscriptions that survive from the Late Bronze Age were usually carved into stone or impressed on clay seals. The Lachish text, on the other hand, involves red ink written on a ceramic jar with a stylus. Variations in stroke thickness and the fluid movement of the signs suggest the scribe was accustomed to writing on softer materials like clay and papyrus, which the team suggests points to an experienced scribal hand. In other words, the inscription provides evidence for writing that is largely lost today.

Paleographic interpretation (the red patch above the second lamed signifies a break in the sherd, not part of the letter). Courtesy Daniel Vainstub et al., “A Late Bronze Age Canaanite Jar Inscription from the 2025 Excavation Season at Lachish,” JJAR (2026), CC-BY 4.0. Drawing by Daniel Vainstub.

Significantly, the Lachish inscription has implications for the history of the alphabet. Although likely originating in the Sinai, the alphabet developed quickly in the Late Bronze Age Levant within a Canaanite milieu. “Canaan” is a Bronze Age term found in Egyptian, Ugaritic, and biblical sources. In those outsider sources, the term refers to a loosely defined network of city-states and cultures in the southern Levant, broadly corresponding to modern Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Accordingly, scholars call the branch of the Semitic language family spoken in the southern Levant “Canaanite.”

The Proto-Canaanite script emerged in the Middle Bronze Age (19th to 17th centuries BCE), simplifying earlier writing systems. By reducing large sign inventories (Akkadian has over 900 syllabic and logographic signs!) to a small set of consonantal symbols, Proto-Canaanite dramatically simplified writing. Before Proto-Canaanite, reading and writing required years of specialized training, and literacy was largely restricted to professional scribes working in palaces and temples.

By the Late Bronze Age, early Canaanite alphabetic forms were circulating across urban centers, though letters were often irregular and experimental. By the Iron Age, several major alphabetic traditions—e.g., Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic—had solidified.

The new Lachish inscription belongs to a late stage of the Proto-Canaanite script, when letters were reaching standardization. The scholars suggest that several features support this conclusion: The text is written right-to-left, the letter forms are more set, and the script uses the reduced 22-letter alphabet that later became dominant. The inscription was discovered in a dump pit associated with Level VI at Lachish, the city’s final Late Bronze Age occupation layer. Because the pit contained characteristic local pottery and was sealed beneath later Iron Age construction, the archaeological context securely dates the inscription to the 12th century BCE. The mature Proto-Canaanite script was previously thought to have emerged only in the 11th century. If correct, the find pushes the standardization of the alphabet back by a century.

FREE ebook: Ten Top Biblical Archaeology Discoveries. Finds like the Pool of Siloam in Israel, where the Gospel of John says Jesus miraculously restored sight to a blind man.

join BAS Bible History Daily mailing list

REQUEST FREE BOOK

DOWNLOAD E-BOOK

 

The inscription also challenges assumptions about where this mature Proto-Canaanite alphabetic script developed. Many scholars have associated the standardization of the alphabet primarily with Phoenicia. But Lachish lies far to the south in Canaan. The find therefore suggests that important developments in alphabetic writing may have occurred more broadly across Canaanite urban centers rather than in a single northern region.

Finally, the inscription bears on biblical dating debates through the word root š-l-ṭ (“to rule”). This root has often been treated as a late Aramaic borrowing into Hebrew and therefore used as evidence for dating certain biblical texts to the Persian period or later. But the Lachish inscription demonstrates that the root already existed in Canaanite usage in the 12th century BCE. The discovery does not prove that biblical passages containing š-l-ṭ are early, but it weakens arguments that rely on the word as a clear indicator of late composition.

This fragmentary, six-letter inscription is small but mighty, with implications that seem inversely proportional to its size.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

Become a BAS All-Access Member Now!

Read Biblical Archaeology Review online, explore 50 years of BAR, watch videos, attend talks, and more

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Early Urbanization in Ancient Canaan

What Happened to the Canaanites?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Earliest Alphabet a Canaanite Invention—Preserved in Sinai Mines

Mining the History of the Alphabet at Serabit el-Khadem

An Alphabet from the Days of the Judges