| Meroitic | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type | Abugida | |
| Spoken languages | Meroitic and possibly Old Nubian | |
| Time period | 300 BC to 600 AD | |
| Parent systems | Egyptian hieroglyphs → Demotic script → Meroitic | |
| Child systems | Old Nubian | |
| ISO 15924 | Mero | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. An abugida ( from Ge‘ez አቡጊዳ ’äbugida or Amharic አቡጊዳ ’abugida is a segmental Writing system which The Meroitic language was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period (about 300 BC - 400 AD and is now extinct Old Nubian is an ancient variety of the Nubian languages, spoken until about the 15th century AD Events By place Egypt Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus, is taken as a hostage to Egypt after the Battle of Ipsus Events By Place World The population of the Earth rises to about 208 million people Egyptian hieroglyphs (ˈhaɪərəʊɡlɪf from Greek grc-Grek ἱερογλύφος " sacred carving " also hieroglyphic = grc-Grek Demotic (from δημοτικός dēmotikós, "popular" refers to either the Ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of Hieratic Old Nubian is an ancient variety of the Nubian languages, spoken until about the 15th century AD ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts, defines two sets of codes for a number of Writing systems (scripts In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's | ||
| History of the alphabet |
|---|
Middle Bronze Age 19 c. The history of the Alphabet begins in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the History of writing. The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar Undeciphered scripts dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE and believed to be ancestral BCE
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| Meroitic 3 c. BCE |
| Ogham 4 c. Ogham (ogam ˈɔɣam Modern Irish or, English) is an Early Medieval Alphabet used primarily to represent the Old Irish language (and CE |
| Hangul 1443 CE |
| Canadian syllabics 1840 CE |
| Zhuyin 1913 CE |
| complete genealogy |
The Meroitic script is an alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë/Kush. Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing', or simply syllabics, is a family of Abugidas {dubious}} used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian Nearly all the segmental scripts (loosely " Alphabets " but see below for more precise terminology used around the globe appear to have derived from the An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either The Meroitic language was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period (about 300 BC - 400 AD and is now extinct Meroë ( Meroitic: Medewi or Bedewi; Arabic: ar مرواه ar-Latn Meruwah) is the name of an ancient city on the east bank of the Kush civilization centered in the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, and the confluence of the River Atbara and Nile in what It was developed sometime during the Napatan Period (about 700 - 300 BC), and first appears in the 2nd century BC. For a time, it was also possibly used to write the Nubian language of the successor Nubian kingdoms. Old Nubian is an ancient variety of the Nubian languages, spoken until about the 15th century AD [1]
There were two graphic forms of the Meroitic alphabet: a monumental epigraphic form taken from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and a cursive form derived from Demotic Egyptian. Epigraphy (ἐπιγραφολογία from Greek ἐπιγραφή — "inscription" is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs engraved Egyptian hieroglyphs (ˈhaɪərəʊɡlɪf from Greek grc-Grek ἱερογλύφος " sacred carving " also hieroglyphic = grc-Grek For the indie rock band see Cursive (band. Cursive is any style of handwriting that is designed for writing down notes and Demotic (from δημοτικός dēmotikós, "popular" refers to either the Ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of Hieratic The majority of texts are cursive. Unlike Egyptian writing, there was a simple one-to-one correspondence between the two forms of Meroitic, except that in the cursive form, consonants are joined in ligatures to a following vowel i.
If the Meroitic alphabet did continue in use by the Nubian kingdoms that succeeded the Kingdom of Meroë, it was replaced by the Coptic alphabet with the introduction of Christianity to Nubia in the sixth century CE. The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The 6th century is the period from 501 to 600 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian / Common Era. The Nubian form of the Coptic alphabet retained three Meroitic letters.
The script was deciphered in 1909 by Francis Llewellyn Griffith, a British Egyptologist. Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1862-1934 was an eminent British Egyptologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries However, the Meroitic language itself has yet to be translated. The Meroitic language was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period (about 300 BC - 400 AD and is now extinct
Function
The direction of cursive writing was from right to left, top to bottom, while the monumental form was written top to bottom in columns going right to left. Monumental letters were oriented to face the beginning of the text, a feature inherited from their hieroglyphic origin.
Being primarily alphabetic, the Meroitic script worked differently than Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some scholars, such as Harald Haarmann, believe that the vowel letters of Meroitic are evidence for an influence of the Greek alphabet in its development. Harald Haarmann (born 1946 is a German linguist and cultural scientist who lives and works in Finland. The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early
Meroitic was a type of alphabet called an abugida: The vowel /a/ was not normally written; rather it was assumed whenever a consonant was written alone. An abugida ( from Ge‘ez አቡጊዳ ’äbugida or Amharic አቡጊዳ ’abugida is a segmental Writing system which That is, the single letter m was read /ma/. All other vowels were overtly written: the letters mi, for example, stood for the syllable /mi/, just as in the Latin alphabet. However, to represent an /m/ without a following vowel, such as at the end of a word, the letter e (schwa) was written after the m. In Linguistics, specifically Phonetics and Phonology, schwa can mean the following An unstressed and toneless neutral That is, the sequence of letters me were used to write both the syllable /me/ and the consonant /m/ by itself. Some syllable-final consonants, especially /n/ and /s/, were often omitted. This system is broadly similar to the Indian abugidas that arose around the same time as Meroitic. The Brahmic family is a family of syllabaries (writing systems used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia,
In the standard transcription, which is used here, the Meroitic letters are given equivalents in the Latin alphabet. It is believed, based on evidence from Egyptian names and other clues, that these had approximately the sound values that an English speaker would assume reading the transcription. That is, the Meroitic letter which looks like an owl in monumental inscriptions, or like a numeral three in cursive Meroitic, we transcribe as m, and it is believed to have been pronounced as /m/. However, this is a historical reconstruction, and while m is not in much doubt, the pronunciations of some of the other letters are much less certain.
There were 23 letters in the Meroitic alphabet, including four vowels:
- a was only used at the beginning of a word. (Otherwise an /a/ was assumed. )
- e (schwa) was used for an obscure vowel, or no vowel at all.
- i and o (some think o was pronounced /u/) were used like vowels in the Latin or Greek alphabets.
The fourteen or so consonants were read with an assumed vowel /a/ unless another vowel was indicated. These were:
- y(a), w(a), b(a), p(a), m(a), n(a), r(a), l(a), ch(a), kh(a), k(a), q(a), s(a), d(a).
Kh is thought to have been a velar fricative, as the ch in Scottish loch or German Bach. The voiceless velar fricative, informally known as the hard ch, is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the Ch was a similar sound, perhaps palatal as in German ich, or uvular as g in Dutch dag. Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants Q was perhaps a uvular stop, as in Arabic Qatar. The voiceless uvular plosive is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages It is pronounced like, except that the tongue makes contact not S may have been like s in sun, or perhaps as sh in shun (see below).
There were in addition several letters that stood for syllables. These contained inherent vowels other than /a/. There is little doubt that the letters te and to stood for full syllables, perhaps [tə] and [tu]. However, there is some dispute over the other suspected syllabic letters:
- ne may have stood for the syllable /ne/, or it may have been a consonant /ny(a)/.
- se may have been a syllable /se/ or a consonant /s(a)/; if the latter, the letter traditionally transcribed as s may have been read /sh(a)/.
- ti may have been either /ti/ or /t(a)/. Note however that since the syllables /te/ and /to/ had dedicated letters, even if ti were a simple consonant, it would only ever been used to write /ti/ and /ta/.
It has been suggested that the use of syllabic letters may have been due to the needs of representing dialectical variation within a single unified script.
There was also a punctuation mark of two to three dots used to divide words and phrases. This was the only punctuation used; space was not used to separate words. In writing a space () is a blank area that is devoid of content which separates words letters numbers and punctuation
See also
- The constructed language Nuwaubic, sometimes called Meroitic. Nuwaubic (sometimes “Nubic” “Meroitic” “Nuwaupic” “Nuwaupik” or “Napata” is a Constructed language
External links
- Meroitic - AncientScripts
- Meroitic at Omniglot
- Meroitic font
- Proposal to encode Meroitic in Unicode
- Examples of Meroitic script
- Meroitic Newsletter - online free
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