Meroitic script

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History of the Alphabet

Wadi el-Hol 19th c. BC Proto-Canaanite 14th c. BC Ugaritic 13th c. BC Phoenician 11th c. BC Hebrew 9th c. BC Aramaic 9th c. BC *Brahmi 3rd c. BC Devanagari 12th c. Thai 13th c. Syriac 2nd c. BC Arabic 4th c. Greek 9th c. BC *Coptic 4th c. Gothic 4th c. Glagolitic 862 Cyrillic 10th c. Old Italic 8th c. BC Latin 7th c. BC Runes 2nd c. South Arabian 9th c. BC
Georgian 5th c. BC
Armenian 405
Orkhon 6th c.
Ogham 6th c.
Hangul 1446

The Meroitic script is an alphabet of Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic origin that was used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë, and possibly the Nubian language of the successor Nubian kingdoms. Being primarily alphabetic, the script worked in quite a different way than Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some scholars, e.g. Haarmann, believe that the Greek alphabet played a role in shaping Meroitic, primarily because Meroitic had letters for vowels, although in other respects it did not function much like Greek.

The Meroitic script was essentially alphabetic, but with a default vowel /a/ assumed unless another vowel was written. There was no way to distinguish an individual consonant from that consonant plus /a/. That is, m represented both the syllable /ma/ and the consonant /m/, while mi was a purely alphabetic /mi/. In this sense it is reminiscent of the Indian abugida alphabets that arose at about the same time. Several syllable-final consonants, such as /n/ and /s/, were often omitted.

There were 23 symbols in total. These included four vowels:

a (at the beginning of a word only; otherwise /a/ was assumed), e (or schwa), i, o (or u);

fourteen or so consonants, with an assumed vowel /a/ unless another vowel was indicated:

y(a), w(a), b(a), p(a), m(a), n(a), r(a), l(a), ch(a) (perhaps palatal, as in German ich, or uvular, like Dutch dag), kh(a) (velar, as in German Bach), k(a), q(a), s(a) or sh(a), d(a);

and several syllables:

ne or ny(a), se or s(a), te, to, t(a) or ti.

There some is dispute over whether se represented a syllable or a consonant /s/, distint from s as /š/; likewise whether ne was a syllable or a consonant /ñ/; and whether t might have been a syllabic ti. It has been suggested that the use of syllables instead of alphabetic letters for some sounds may have been due to the needs of representing Meroitic dialectical variation within a single unified script.

There were two graphic forms of the Meroitic alphabet, a monumental lapidary form taken from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and a cursive form derived from demotic. The majority of texts are cursive. Unlike Egyptian writing, there was a simple one-to-one correspondance between the two forms of Meroitic, except that in the cursive form, a consonant is joined in a ligature to a following i.

The direction of writing was from right to left, top to bottom; or top to bottom in columns going right to left. The monumental signs faced toward the beginning of a text, as did their Egyptian hieroglyphic sources.

There was also a sign of three horizontal or vertical dots used to divide words or phrases; this was the only punctuation used.

If it was indeed used by the Nubian kingdoms, the Meroitic script would have been replaced by the Coptic alphabet with the introduction of Christianity to Nubia in the sixth century CE.

Meroitic script

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