Meroitic Language

Meroitic was the language of the elite during the three successive kingdoms of Kush, from 2000 bce to 450 ce . Only in the last stage of its long history was it written with a script of its own, an alphasyllabary whose signs, numbering twenty‐three plus a word‐divider, were ultimately derived from the Egyptian scripts. This alphasyllabary used two distinct sets of signs, hieroglyphic and cursive, the former for sacred texts in the temples and chapels, the latter for all other contexts. The script was deciphered in 1911 by F. L. Griffith, but the language itself, after a century of research, is only partially understood, mainly because bilingual inscriptions are missing and, until recently, the linguistic family to which Meroitic belongs was disputed. In the second decade of the twenty‐first century, this family, a subgroup of the Nilo‐Saharan phylum called Northern East Sudanic (NES), was identified by the present author. In addition to Meroitic, it includes four small language families extending from Chad to Eritrea: Tama and Mararit in Waddai and Darfur; Nyimang and Afitti in the Nuba Mountains, in central Sudan; Nubian language group in Darfur, Kordofan, and in the Nile Valley in the north of Sudan and the southernmost part of Egypt; and, finally, the Nara dialects in western Eritrea. Around 2000 Meroitic texts of various length are known, but new inscriptions are found every year. Most of them are funerary texts, but there are also royal chronicles, pilgrims' graffiti, and many other textual categories, inscribed on stone, potsherds, wood, and papyrus.