MEROITIC LANGUAGE AND WRITING. The Ethi opian kings of Napata, and afterwards of Meroe, employed the Egyptian language in hieroglyphic writing for their formal in scriptions and presumably for other records ; but dating from the first century B.C. to near the end of the third century A.D. there are found in Nubia monumental records, tombstones, funerary altars, and graffiti inscribed in a native language and in a special script which is called Meroitic, since Nubia was then ruled from Meroe. The same writing is found also on potsherds, and the use of it on prepared skins and writing tablets of wood can be certified from small fragments. For the decoration of temples, etc., there were employed the original hieroglyphic (pictorial) forms of the Meroitic writing symbols, but debased hieroglyphic Egyptian was also used for the same purpose.
The symbols of Meroitic writing were modelled on debased Egyptian, but were employed on an entirely different system. Like Egyptian, the Meroitic writing was from right to left ; the signs, unlike Egyptian, face backwards. The elaborate Egyptian writing does not express vowels, whereas the simple Meroitic system aimed at recording syllables each consisting of a conso nant followed by a vowel. The Meroitic alphabet consisted of seventeen consonantal signs and four rather vague vowel signs together with two syllabics to and to or to, making twenty-three characters in all. Besides the alphabet there were special symbols
for numerals and perhaps in rare cases resort could be had to special picture signs to symbolize special words. The words were usually separated by double points so that the writing was ad mirably clear except in regard to the distinction of vowel sounds and the probability that a certain kind of vowel (a?) was not marked and had to be surmised from the context.
Meroitic writing was deciphered in 1910 after the discovery of a large number of new inscriptions in Lower Nubia and at Meroe; the language, however, is still almost entirely a sealed book, though names of persons, deities and places, also certain titles borrowed from Egyptian and Meroitic titles which occur in Egyptian demotic, are readily found. It can only be stated as yet that the Meroitic language shows agglutinative formation, ab sence of gender, and some degree of connection with Nubian.
See F. Ll. Griffith, Karanag, The Meroitic Inscriptions of Shabtal and Karanog (University of Pennsylvania, Eckley B. Core, Jr., Expedition to Nubia, vol. vi., 1911) and articles in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vols. iii., iv. and xi. (F. LL. G.)