A New and Strange Egyptian Treasure

Earliest Semitic Text Revealed In Egyptian Pyramid Inscription:

"'This finding should be of great interest to cultural historians,' said Prof. Steiner. 'Linguists, too, will be interested in these texts. They show that Proto-Canaanite, the common ancestor of Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite and Hebrew, existed already in the third millennium B.C.E as a language distinct from Aramaic, Ugaritic and the other Semitic languages. And they provide the first direct evidence for the pronunciation of Egyptian in this early period.' The texts will also be important to biblical scholars, since they shed light on several rare words in the Bible, he said.

'This is a sensational discovery,' said Moshe Bar-Asher, Bialik Professor of Hebrew Language at the Hebrew University and president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. 'It is the earliest attestation of a Semitic language, in general, and Proto-Canaanite, in particular.'"