Probably Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic · Meroitic cursive
Meroitic
𐦳𐦣𐦫𐦡 qore, “ruler, king”
- Spoken
- c. 300 BC – AD 400
- Written
- inscriptions c. 200 BC – AD 400
- Where
- The Middle Nile, today northern Sudan
Meroitic is a strange case: we know how to pronounce it, roughly, but not what it says. In 1909 the British Egyptologist Francis Llewellyn Griffith worked out the sound values of its two scripts, one hieroglyphic, one cursive. Since then, scholars have been able to read Meroitic inscriptions aloud, but only a few hundred words are understood. It was the language of the Kingdom of Kush, whose queens and kings built steep pyramids at Meroë, and is often called the oldest written language of sub-Saharan Africa.
Where and when
The kingdom of Kush ruled the Nile south of Egypt for over a thousand years. From about 300 BC its capital was Meroë, near the sixth cataract, a city of iron furnaces, temples and more than two hundred pyramids. Kushite kings had once ruled Egypt itself, as its Twenty-fifth Dynasty, in the eighth and seventh centuries BC.
Kushite rulers first wrote in Egyptian. From about the second century BC they began writing their own language, in two scripts derived from Egyptian: hieroglyphs for royal monuments and a cursive for everything else. Over a thousand inscriptions survive, on temples, tombstones, offering tables and pottery. Long texts can be read aloud but not translated.
How it fell silent
Meroë declined in the third and fourth centuries AD. Trade routes shifted toward the Red Sea, the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia grew powerful, and nomadic groups such as the Noba moved into the Nile valley. An inscription of King Ezana of Aksum, from around AD 350, describes a campaign in the region, and Meroë seems to have been abandoned soon after.
The last Meroitic inscriptions date to the late fourth or early fifth century. The newcomers spoke an early form of Nubian, and when the Nubian kingdoms became Christian in the sixth century, they wrote in Greek, Coptic and Old Nubian. Meroitic left some words behind in Nubian, but as a language it fell silent and its meaning was largely forgotten.
How it may have sounded
-
𐦳𐦣𐦫𐦡
qore
Say it roughly KOH-reh
“ruler, king”
A royal title; the q may have been a sound further back in the throat than k, and the final e may have been a short neutral vowel or no vowel at all.
-
𐦲𐦷𐦲𐦡
kdke
Say it roughly KAN-dah-keh
“queen, queen mother”
Greek writers spelled it Kandake, Candace in Latin and in the Book of Acts, which shows that Meroitic did not write an n before another consonant.
-
𐦠𐦨𐦩𐦢
Amni
Say it roughly AH-mah-nee
“the god Amun”
Royal names such as Amanirenas and Amanishakheto contain it, and their Greek and Egyptian spellings suggest the reading Amani.
Your name, set in stone
Meroitic consonant signs carry a built-in a; e, i and o follow as separate signs, and e can also mean no vowel at all. It is written right to left, and n before another consonant is usually left out.
A playful transcription, not a scholarly one: the people who used this script never heard your name, and would have spelled it in more than one way.
Three things
- Meroitic words are separated by a divider of two or three dots, which helped Griffith pick out words.
- The Candace of the Book of Acts is a Meroitic royal title, kdke, not a personal name.
- The royal cemeteries of Meroë hold more pyramids than are known from all of Egypt, though smaller and steeper.