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Being primarily alphabetic, the Meroitic script worked in quite a different way than Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some scholars, e.g. Haarmann , believe that the Greek Alphabet played a role in its development, 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. A consonant by itself was indicated by the vowel /e/ (schwa) following the symbol. That is, the two letters me represented both the syllable /me/ and the consonant /m/ by itself, while the syllable '''ma''' was written with one letter, and '''mi''' with two. Some other syllables had special glyphs. In this sense, it is properly a 'semi-syllabic' script, only vaguely reminiscent of the Indian Abugida alphabets that arose around 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/, distinct 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 (cursive); or top to bottom in columns going right to left (hieroglyphic form). 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.

The writing was deciphered in 1909 by Francis Llewellyn Griffith , a British Egyptologist. However, the language itself is still not fully understood.


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