Language and Writing in the Kingdom of Meroe - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société
Book Sections Year : 2021

Language and Writing in the Kingdom of Meroe

Claude Rilly

Abstract

Sudan is one the rare places in inner Africa where the study of languages can rely on a huge long historical depth, thanks to the ancient Egyptian sources. Two linguistic phyla, Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan, are present in the region for millennia. Meroitic, belonging to the Nilo-Saharan phylum, was since the second millennium BC the main spoken language of Nubia. Although its two scripts were deciphered in 1911, the language is not yet fully understood. Further progress in expected from linguistic comparison with living languages of the same family and from future excavations.
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Dates and versions

halshs-03514476 , version 1 (06-01-2022)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-03514476 , version 1

Cite

Claude Rilly. Language and Writing in the Kingdom of Meroe. Geoff Emberling & Bruce B. Williams. Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia, Oxford Univesrity Press, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp.653-669, 2021, 9780190496272. ⟨halshs-03514476⟩

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