For decades, it's been a common belief that the Ancient Egyptians were responsible for the very first alphabet. Now, a shocking finding challenges this assumption, pushing back the age of the ...

Clay objects roughly the size of fingers were discovered during a dig at the ancient city of Umm el-Marra. The engraved symbols may be part of the earliest known alphabet. What appears to be ...

The earliest known example of alphabetic writing has been discovered etched onto small clay cylinders in an ancient Syrian tomb ... scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt ...

Archaeologists have uncovered the oldest known alphabetic writing in an ancient Syrian city ... "Previously, scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 ...

for example—these did not make use of an alphabet. Cuneiform, considered to be the oldest known writing system, was developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia (an ancient region centered on ...

Symbols on finger-sized clay objects discovered during dig at ancient city of Umm el-Marra could be earliest known alphabet (Glenn Schwartz, Johns Hopkins University) This form of writing may have ...

Researchers have discovered evidence of what they say is the world’s oldest alphabet, believed to have existed in the Middle East hundreds of years earlier than other ancient scripts.

Nsibidi: Do you know about the ancient Igbo system of writing? [allafrica] Known around the world are the Hieroglyphics peculiar to the ancient Egyptian civilisation in Africa, but did you know ...

Save guides, add subjects and pick up where you left off with your BBC account. The ancient Egyptians invented one of the earliest known writing systems used from around 3000 BC. The symbols they ...