A finger-sized clay cylinder from a tomb in northern Syria appears to be the oldest example of writing using an alphabet rather than hieroglyphs or cuneiform Researchers may have deciphered the oldest known scrap of alphabetic writing yet discovered, and it may be a nearly 4,500-year-old gift tag.

A clay cylinder found in a tomb holding six skeletons in northern Syria bears the word “silanu,” which may be a name, says Glenn Schwartz, an archaeologist at Johns Hopkins University. Schwartz discovered the finger-sized cylinder, along with three others bearing similar etchings, in a tomb at Tell Umm el-Marra, an ancient city that sits between modern-day Aleppo and the Euphrates River.