Meroitic Writing, Linguistics
European Museums, The British MuseumLinguistics, Meroitic Writing
The hieroglyphic and cursive forms of the Meroitic script with their phonetic values.
Meroitic Writing
Meroitic was the first Nubian language to be recorded in written form. The earliest known texts date from the mid-2nd century B.C. The language was written in two scripts. One used twenty-three signs derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, but with different sound values. The other was a shorthand form known as cursive, partly based on Egyptian demotic script. Meroitic hieroglyphs were used chiefly for monumental inscriptions, while the cursive script occurs in less formal contexts, such as on funerary stelae, offering tables, ostraca (inscribed potsherds), papyri and graffiti.
The sound values for the signs were established by Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1862 - 1934) through a comparative study of inscriptions in Meroitic and Ancient Egyptian. The key to the breakthrough was a stand from Wad Ban Naga, inscribed with royal names in both Egyptian and Meroitic hieroglyphs. Griffith's work enabled names, titles and a few standard phrases to be translated. Further progress towards understanding Meroitic text has been hampered by the scarcity of other bilingual inscriptions and by the failure to link Meroitic to other African languages.
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Linguistics, Meroitic Writing
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