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Show Old Alphabet Aid to Language Study Canaan Cuneiform Writing Important Discovery. New Haven, Conn. Discovery of a hitherto unknown prebiblical Semitic language, revealing the source of the ancient and modern alphabets and offering a new key to controversial passages In the Bible, was announced by Dr. Julian J. Obermann, visiting professor of Semitic Se-mitic languages at Yale. Cuneiform tablets, found at Ras Shatura, near Antioch, In northern Syria, disclosed the language of Canaan, and, according to Doctor Obermann, "are written in a new alphabet that proves to be the oldest known." He termed the find "an epoch-making epoch-making discovery in the field ot Semitic antiquities and the most Important find since the Babylonian Babylon-ian cuneiforms have come to light." The tablets, he said, were Inscribed In-scribed during or before the Fifteenth Fif-teenth century, B. C, and offer a, previously unknown link between techniques of cuneiform and the principles of alphabetic script The' Ras Shamra tablets, he said, although al-though written in cuneiform charac-, ters, employ only 30 signs, using them as alphabetic letetrs, whereas other systems known consisted of; hundreds of sigi.s representing syl-1 lahles of ideogranu. The new Semitic dialects of Ras Shamra promise to throw light oaj tie evolution of the letters common com-mon to ancient and modern alphabets, alpha-bets, revealing how the various let-came let-came to have their Individual shape, and how they came to be arranged ar-ranged in their traditional order. As a result of the discovery, he said, Biblical literature and antiquities antiqui-ties will be better understood. Neither the language nor script was understood when the tablets first were found by an archcologi-cal archcologi-cal expedition of the French Academy Acad-emy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres, he said. The decipherment was by French and Herman scholars, schol-ars, "opening a door to the understanding under-standing of Semitic lore and civilization civ-ilization which scholars only a few years ago did not know existed." |