But it is the Nubians' written language that he finds most intriguing. Borrowing 24 signs from Egyptian hieroglyphics and using them as an alphabet, they developed their own writing system, Grzymski says. "It's the second-oldest writing system in Africa, but it has still not been deciphered." So far, 1,500 inscriptions written in the ancient Nubian language have been found, but no one knows what they mean. Grzymski and his colleagues are sure to find more as they continue excavating. While finding more palaces would make Grzymiski happy, what he would most like to find is some manner of bilingual inscription to enable scholars to unlock the messages left by the Nubian people. He says the archaeologists need something like a Rosetta Stone, the famed slab of black basalt inscribed in Greek text and Egyptian hierogs that enabled scholars in the early 1800s to decipher the Egyptian writings.
Naturally, there's a chapter about this system in the title shown below. The resemblance of this to (Coptic) Pilak was patent, and suggested that the early Egyptian name of Philae was Pileke (or Pileqe). Eventually, Griffith came up with a Meroitic 'alphabet' in hieroglyphic and cursive that most scholars regard as essentially correct, if not absolutely reliable... There is... much less resemblance between Meroitic cursive and Egyptian demotic signs; only four are actually the same. The Meroitic 'alphabet' also apparently differs from the Egyptian in having four signs with syllabic values... Following his brilliant detective work, Griffith went on to substitute his phonetic values in all the available inscriptions. But here he came up against what has proved to be the great obstacle to a full decipherment of Meroitic: his readings could not be related to any known language; neither did the enldess Meroitic personal names yielded by his substitutions resemble known Egyptian or Greek names... Today, we know the meanings of only 26 simple words in Meroitic... Abdelgadir Abdalla of the University of Khartoum (now at the King Saud University in Riyadh), attempted his own unaided dissection of Meroitic words and analysis of their constituent parts. On the assumption that the unknown Meroitic language is agglutinative... Abdalla aimed to reverse the process... and segment Meroitic words into their constituent parts... Abdalla's approach has not attracted support from other scholars, however, because his basic assumption is unsubstantiated and his methodology, as presented, is dubious and difficult to follow. [pp 148-151]
14 posted on
12/28/2004 5:18:42 PM PST by
SunkenCiv
(My Sunday Feeling is that Nothing is easy. Goes for the rest of the week too.)
15 posted on
12/29/2004 3:04:46 PM PST by
SunkenCiv
("The odds are very much against inclusion, and non-inclusion is unlikely to be meaningful." -seamole)
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