Saturday, June 9, 2018

Meroitic: Africa's Oldest Written Language



Figure 1: Meroitic Language

Africa is considered the cradle of humanity based on the number of ancestral humans found on the continent, and as a result it is considered the location of the world’s oldest languages.  Historical linguists focus their studies on several San click languages as they are believed to most closely resemble early languages, and today’s blog post is going to discuss one of those early languages: Meroitic. 

Meroitic is Africa’s oldest written language, but very little is currently known about the language.  The lack of information about Meroitic is due to two primary factors: first, it is unlike any spoken language that exists today.  There are no known descendants of Meroitic spoken in modern day Sudan, but it is believed to have been a parent language to several other north-central African languages.  Also, there is no translated sources, like the Rosetta Stone that made deciphering ancient Egyptian easier. 

Despite these challenges there is quite a bit known about the language.  First, it is known that Meroitic was an ancient language spoken widely within the Kush kingdom, which existed in Nile River Valley of modern day Sudan.  It was a language spoken between the 3rd century BC to the 5th century AD by both elites and commoners, demonstrating that the citizens of Kush were literate as well as multilingual as Kushites spoke multiple languages, not just Meroitic.  It was named after its capital city, Meroe, by British archaeologist Francis Llewellyn Griffith, who was the first to attempt to translate the language. 

Meroitic existed in two written forms: hieroglyphs (made up of pictures) and a cursive script (Figure 1).  It is believed that the Meroitic hieroglyphic text borrowed from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, which is one parent of the language, but additional parent languages included Arabic, Semitic, and Akkadian languages.  It is believed to be an Afro-Asiatic language in part due to the Arabian language influences, but some scholars believe other Asian languages also influenced the language.  Unfortunately, this is still debated among linguists.

With the recent discovery of Meroitic texts at the city of Sedeinga there is renewed hope that more information will be gained about this ancient language.  What we do know about Meroitic provides us a great deal of information about the formation of language, cultural contacts among African groups, and that influence on language evolution.  Further study can only help to clarify the fascinating information we already have.

Bibliography

Khalil, M., & Miller, C. (1996). Old Nubian and Language Uses in Nubia. Les Langues en Egypte, 27-28.
LipiƄski, E. (2011). Meroitic (Review Article). Rocznik Orientalistyczny, 87-104.
Omer, I. (2009). Writing: Meroitic. Retrieved from Ancient Sudan-Kush: http://www.ancientsudan.org/writing_02_meroitic.htm
Rowan , K. (2006). Meroitic-An Afroasiatic Language? SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics, 169-206.
Smith, R. (2009). Constructing Word Similarities in Meroitic as an Aid to Decipherment. British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan, 1-10.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Its amazing that African culture started so many things that are publicly unknown as common knowledge. I've never known about this language or the transcription behind it. To know that its still exists in Sudan makes me want to learn more about it. I have the question on what made the written language sort of disappear? Or more of the question , why is it not widely used today still from Africans? I know it says that it was more of a parent language to other written languages? I may want to look more into the history behind this one. Thank You.

-Jazlyn Logan

Anonymous said...

This was an interesting blog. I see these symbols a lot on social media in people's screen names. I honestly never knew these where a part of a language. I wonder why it kind of disappeared.
-Kyla Thomas

Anonymous said...

I found it fascinating to learn about the Meroitic language. It's interesting that cursive script is used so long ago.

Elaine christopher

Anonymous said...

This language considered to be extinct as the speaking language? Meroitic has forms and then gets manipulated and passed in as a parent language and influence other cultures. If there is no descedents could it be made-up?
Qwynn Marquez