D’var Torah: The Nit-comb of Lachish and Us

Written by Rabbi Josh Levy — 11 November 2022

Drive down Highway 6, the trans-Israel highway that begins just south of Haifa and stretches down the length of Israel almost to Beersheva.
Take a left at the Kiryat Gat interchange, and in a few minutes you’ll find yourself at Tel Lachish.

Tel Lachish is an Israeli national park – a designated site, because of its historic importance. It is the location for ongoing archaeological exploration. And it was in the news this week.

It was in the news because of the discovery there of a small ivory comb. On which was carved an inscription: ‘May this tusk’, it reads ‘root out the lice of the hair and beard’.

 

This is not, perhaps, the most beautiful of sentiments. And this is the most ordinary of items. But what is extraordinary is that this nit-comb dates to about 1700 BCE, well over three and a half thousand years ago.
And that makes this the earliest known full sentence in the Canaanite alphabet, and one of the earliest full sentences ever found.

 

This comb tells us some important things.
It attests to the very earliest stages of the alphabet that would become the Hebrew letters we have been reading this evening.
It tells us that there was a market in ivory back then. Because there were no elephants in Canaan at that time so the comb probably came from Egypt.
Which also tells us that nits were a real issue – and an issue whatever your social status. Because this was not an object that belonged to someone without money.

 

The comb also adds one more, tiny element to a place with a long and complex history, into which we here in this room, we as Jews are bound.

Lachish was a major Canaanite city long before the emergence of a distinctive Israelite culture. It was part of the complex interactions between peoples during years of Egyptian dominance of the Levant in the Bronze Age.
At some point in the Early Iron Age it became a major Israelite city. How exactly this happened is unclear. According to the Book of Joshua it was captured as part of the conquest of Canaan after a two-day siege. But, whether by conquest or migration, what is clear is that it became probably the second most important city in the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

 

What else do we know about Lachish?
In 701 BCE, it was besieged by the Assyrians in one of the most famous sieges of the ancient Near East. It is a siege attested to by its story in the Bible; and also by extra biblical evidence – by the remains of the siege ramp at Lachish itself, and in wall reliefs commissioned by Assyrian Sennacherib for his palace in Nineveh – wall reliefs which can now be seen in the British Museum.

120 years later, the city would be destroyed as part of the Babylonian campaign which saw the residents of Judah exiled to Babylon. The Lachish letters – written on clay pottery pieces to the commander of the garrison at Lachish – are a glimpse of the last communication between commanders of Judean forts as the invasion took place.

 

So, Lachish is part of our ancient story.

And it is part of our modern story, too.

The first archaeological dig at Lachish – the one that found the Lachish letters – was carried out by an Englishman, of course. His name was James Leslie Starkey. The dig took place in the 1930s. Lachish was now an Arab area, with a nearby Arab village, El Qubayba.

Starkey himself was killed in 1938, before the dig ended. His murder was blamed by the British on Arab rebels, seen as part of the Arab revolt against British rule in Palestine.

Ten years later, Lachish, and the village of El Qubayba, with its population of about 1000, were captured by Israeli forces in the 1948 war of independence. The village was destroyed, its inhabitants became refugees.
And the land that was once Al Qubayba is now the site of the Israeli national park of Tel Lachish.

 

As Jews we are intimately entwined with this story. Entwined with the Land of Israel – its history is our history, its people our people, its language our language.
Right now, many of us are reeling from the results of the Israeli election, from the challenge of seeing far right extremists in an Israeli government; from the sense of hopelessness about the possibility of peace and reconciliation; the remoteness of a just solution for two peoples. And we might be tempted to turn away. But this is one option that is not open to us – what we cannot do is disconnect, say that this is nothing to do with us.

Because, from a 3,700 year old nit-comb, with the earliest example of Canaanite language, linked over 1000s of years to the Hebrew that we read this evening; to the stories of a place like Lachish that are there as part of our formative stories; to the reality that our refuge, the homeland of our people, was made possible only through the dispossession of others who already lived there…
From all this, whatever is happening today, whether we like it or not, the story of Lachish and the story of Israel is our story too.