Meroitic language
| Meroitic (Kushite) | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Kingdom of Kush |
| Region | Southern part of Upper Egypt around Aswan (Lower Nubia) to the Khartoum area of Sudan (Upper Nubia). |
| Era | Possibly attested as early as 12th Dynasty Egypt (ca. 2000 BC - ca. 1800 BC) and fully extinct no later than the 6th century AD |
| Meroitic alphasyllabary | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
xmr | |
| Glottolog | mero1237 |
Meroitic (/m[invalid input: 'err'][invalid input: 'oh']ˈɪtɪk/) is an extinct language that is properly called Kushite after the attested autonym, k3š. "Meroitic" should properly be understood as a specific period (c. 300 BC - c. 350 AD) when Meroë was the royal capital of the Kingdom of Kush and a period in which the Kushite language was spoken and written. It is a similar circumstance with "Kerman" (c. 2500 BC - c. 1500 BC) and "Napatan" (664 BC - c. 300 BC). During the Meroitic Period, the Kushite language was spoken from the area of the 1st Cataract of the Nile to the Khartoum area of Sudan. The Kushite language, by way of names, is possibly attested as early as Middle Kingdom Egypt's 12th Dynasty (c. 2000 BC) in the Egyptian Execration texts concerning Kerma.[1][2][3][4] Both the Meroitic Period and the Kingdom of Kush itself ended with the fall of Meroë (c. 350 AD), but use of the Kushite language continued for a time after that event. The language likely became fully extinct by the 6th century when it was supplanted by Byzantine Greek, Coptic, and Old Nubian. The Kushite language, during the Meroitic period, was written in two forms of the Meroitic alphasyllabary: Meroitic Cursive, which was written with a stylus and was used for general record-keeping; and Meroitic Hieroglyphic, which was carved in stone or used for royal or religious documents. The last known Meroitic inscription is written in Meroitic Cursive and dates to the 5th century.[5] The Kushite language is poorly understood, owing to the scarcity of bilingual texts.
Classification
The classification of the "Meroitic" language was uncertain due to the scarcity of data and difficulty in interpreting it. Since the alphabet was deciphered in 1909, it has been proposed that "Meroitic" is related to the Nubian languages and similar languages of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. The competing claim is that "Meroitic" is a member of the Afroasiatic phylum.[6]
Claude Rilly is the most recent proponent of the Nilo-Saharan idea: he proposes that it is Eastern Sudanic, the Nilo-Saharan family that includes Nubian (Rilly 2004, 2007, 2012). The issue was unresolved and most classifications listed "Meroitic" either as questionably Nilo-Saharan or as unclassified (as Joseph Greenberg did).[7]
Rowan (2006, 2011), on the other hand, notes that the "Meroitic" sound inventory and phonotactics (the only aspects of the language which are secure) are similar to those of the Afroasiatic languages, and dissimilar from Nilo-Saharan languages. For example, very rarely does one find the sequence CVC, where the consonants (C) are both labials or both velars. This is similar to consonant restrictions found throughout the Afroasiatic language family, suggesting that "Meroitic" might have been an Afroasiatic language like Egyptian.
References
- ^ Claude Rilly (2007). La langue du royaume de Méroé, Un panorama de la plus ancienne culture écrite d’Afrique subsaharienne, Paris: Champion (Bibliothèque de l’École pratique des hautes études, Sciences historiques et philologiques, t. 344)
- ^ Claude Rilly (2011). Recent Research on Meroitic, the Ancient Language of Sudan. http://www.ityopis.org/Issues-1_files/ITYOPIS-I-Rilly.pdf. Under the sub-heading - The original cradle of Proto-NES: chronological and palaeoclimatic issues. p. 18
- ^ Claude Rilly (2016). "Meroitic" in UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3128r3sw. p. 1
- ^ Claude Rilly (2004). THE LINGUISTIC POSITION OF MEROITIC. http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/projets/clhass/PageWeb/ressources/Isolats/Meroitic%20Rilly%202004.pdf. p. 1
- ^ The inscription of the Blemmye king, Kharamadoye.
- ^ Kirsty Rowan. "Meroitic - an Afroasiatic language?". citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. Retrieved 2017-12-18.
- ^ "What seems clear is that there is no simple linguistic solution waiting in the wings....Greenberg, writing in 1955, was pessimistic about "Meroitic": 'the language does not appear to be related to any existing language of Africa.'" Andrew Robinson. 2002. Lost Languages (McGraw-Hill). Page 154.
Bibliography
- Meroitic Newsletter (Paris, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1968).
- Böhm, Gerhard : "Die Sprache der Aithiopen im Lande Kusch" in Beiträge zur Afrikanistik, 34 (Wien, 1988). ISBN 3-85043-047-2.
- Rilly, Claude and Alex de Voogt (2012). The Meroitic Language and Writing System, Cambridge University Press, 2012. ISBN 1-10700-866-2.
- Rilly, Claude (March 2004) "The Linguistic Position of Meroitic", Sudan Electronic Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology.
- ———— (2007) La langue du Royaume de Meroe. Paris, Champion.
- Rowan, Kirsty (2011). "Meroitic Consonant and Vowel Patterning". Lingua Aegytia, 19.
- ———— "Meroitic - An Afroasiatic Language?" SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 14:169–206.
- ———— (2006) Meroitic: A Phonological Investigation. PhD thesis, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies).
- Welsby, Derek A. The Kingdom of Kush (London, British Museum Press, 1996), 189-195, ISBN 071410986X.
- Bender, Marvin Lionel, The Meroitic problem, in Bender, M. L., editor, Peoples and cultures of the Ethio-Sudan borderlands, Committee on Northeast African Studies, African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1981, pp. 5–32.
- Lipiński, Edward (2011). "Meroitic (Review article)1" ROCZNIK ORIENTALISTYCZNY, T. LXIV, Z. 2, 2011 (s. 87–104).
- Francis Breyer: "Einführung in die Meroistik", LIT Verlag, Berlin 2014
