In the ancient world, lice were ubiquitous and excruciating enough to be chosen by God as one of the Ten Plagues sent against the Egyptians ahead of the Exodus, as described in the Torah. A new discovery by a team of Israeli archaeologists and researchers has shed light not only on the experience of dealing with lice in biblical Israel, but also on the literacy of the Canaanites, one of the Jewish people’s nemeses.

As the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced Wednesday, an inscription in Canaanite was identified on a 3,700-year-old comb excavated in Tel Lachish. The inscription features a complete sentence reading: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”

“This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel,” Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Yosef Garfinkel said. “There are Canaanites in Ugarit in Syria, but they write in a different script, not the alphabet that is used till today.”

“The Canaanite cities are mentioned in Egyptian documents, the Amarna letters that were written in Akkadian, and in the Hebrew Bible,” he added. “The comb inscription is direct evidence for the use of the alphabet in daily activities some 3700 years ago. This is a landmark in the history of the human ability to write.”

The artifact was unearthed at Tel Lachish in 2017 by a team that included archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) and from the Southern Adventist University in the United States. The inscription – featuring 17 letters measuring two to three millimeters – was only noticed when the comb was further examined.

Researchers from Ben Gurion University were involved in the project of analyzing the inscription and the comb itself.

Their findings were published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.

Measuring around 2.5×3.5 centimeters, the comb was considered a luxury object, carved in ivory that was most likely imported from Egypt. While damaged, the artifact still shows the base of six large teeth on one side and 14 very fine teeth on the other. If the first side was probably used to comb and untangle the hair of the owner, the second side’s purpose was to remove lice and lice’s eggs. The researchers were able to identify the remains of lice on the object.

Lachish was a major Canaanite center, and it is mentioned in the Bible in several instances.

“From Libnah, Yehoshua proceeded with all Yisrael to Lachish; he encamped against it and attacked it,” reads the book of Joshua (10:31-32). “Hashem delivered Lachish into the hands of Yisrael. They captured it on the second day and put it and all the people in it to the sword, just as they had done to Libnah.”