1184 writing: Egypt texts on stone and brick walls These texts represent the oldest-known Meroitic hieroglyphs, which were adapted from Egyptian hieroglyphics and changed to meet Nubian needs Although the two forms of hieroglyphs appear similar, they not represent the same meanings Based on their connection to Egyptian hieroglyphics, the written Meroitic marks can be deciphered; however, the Meroitic language has not been translated, so it is impossible to understand what has been written The kingdom of Axum created its own indigenous alphabet and imported other alphabets through trade and migration Axum’s indigenous Ge’ez language and alphabet were based on the language and script of migrants from southern Arabia; the Sabaen alphabet dates from about sixth century b.c.e The Hebraic alphabet also may have been migratory According to one origin myth, Menelik I, son of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon of Israel, brought the alphabet from Israel in the 10th century b.c.e Another myth proposes that the Hebraic alphabet was brought in the ninth century b.c.e by the Hebrew tribe of Dan living in the Ethiopian highlands In the 12th century Jewish clerics dated to antiquity the Torah used by the descendants of the tribe of Dan The Egyptian Coptic missionaries brought the their alphabet to Axum during the fourth century c.e., and the Greek language and alphabet and Latin language and Roman alphabet came through the Port of Adulis through the Red Sea trade Present-day Ethiopia’s Ethiopic script reportedly originated in Axum in the second century c.e and is based on the ancient writing system of Ge’ez This writing system was used in religious and secular inscriptions on stone and metal objects During the fourth century c.e King Ezana adopted Christianity as the religion of the state, and biblical texts were translated from the Coptic language and script to the Ge’ez language and Ethiopic script In the North African region of Maghreb inscriptions in an indigenous Berber writing called Tafineq date from as early as 500 b.c.e This writing system was used to communicate messages, for funerary inscriptions, and to mark property lines Tafineq may have been influenced by the Punic writing system based on the Phoenician alphabet used in the colony of Carthage In addition, the Greek language and alphabet and Latin language and Roman alphabet were imported first through trade and later through Roman conquest in the Punic Wars (264–146 b.c.e.) From 155 to 160 c.e the Latin language and Roman alphabet were used by the Roman Catholic Church to spread Christianity in North Africa Ancient African writing is the second oldest in the world Written hieroglyphics changed as the need arose to streamline complex writing system Egypt’s gift to the world was its writing system, which was adapted by other civilizations to meet their unique needs, and papyrus, on which texts covering various subjects and in various languages and scripts are preserved for posterity Other writing systems were imported through cultural diff usion as various groups traded with, migrated to, or conquered civilizations on the continent EGYPT BY LEO DEPUYDT Egyptians wrote their language in the pictorial hieroglyphic script Hieroglyphic is a Greek word meaning “pertaining to holy carving.” The unit of the writing system is the hieroglyph Hieroglyphs are stylized but realistic pictures of beings and objects The earliest hieroglyphic writing dates to about 3000 b.c.e Early attempts are imperfect and difficult to decipher Full-fledged hieroglyphic writing emerged around 2500 b.c.e The hieroglyphic tradition steeply declined in the second century c.e., and the latest surviving texts date to the fourth and fift h centuries c.e The last scribe presumably died sometime in the sixth or seventh century c.e In 1822 the French Egyptologist Jean Franỗois Champollion deciphered hieroglyphic writing Because writing represents language, any description of a writing system must be preceded by a description of the language system Language is composed entirely of signs Signs have two sides, the signified and the signifier An example of the signified is a person’s image of a dog The signifier attached to this signified is the sound pattern consisting of the three sounds written d + o + g In other words, the signifier is the code in the brain that prompts the speech organs to produce the sounds Signified and signifier are independent The proof is a comparison of languages French speakers also know the signified of a dog but use different sounds as the signifier, namely chien In English and French the image of a dog is about the same, but the sound pattern changes Language is neither signifieds nor signifiers but rather the links between the two English speakers tacitly agree to link the image of a dog always to the sound pattern written dog The biochemical configurations of signifiers, signifieds, and the links between them in the brain are unknown, but their existence seems certain Hieroglyphs can refer to either signifieds or signifiers The hieroglyphic script is one of the few scripts that does both A hieroglyph denoting a signified is an ideogram—that is, an “idea character.” A stroke included in a hieroglyph indicates that the hieroglyphs meet two conditions: They are ideograms, and they denote a whole word by themselves A hieroglyph denoting a signifier (one or more sounds linked to a signified) is a phonogram—that is, a “sound character.” Phonograms represent one, two, or three consonants They are therefore uniliteral, biliteral, or triliteral Vowels are not written Phonograms also function as phonetic complements Pictures come to denote sounds through the rebus principle Rebus is Latin for “representing sounds by depicting objects.” In English the sound made by the letter I might be represented by a picture of an eye It is in this way that phonograms are derived from pictures In rebus derivation a hieroglyph that denotes a signified as an ideogram—and that secondarily denotes the signifier attached to that signified—is cut loose from the signified and left to express only the signifier as a phonogram Like any language, Egyptian consists of a limited set of distinctive sounds, about 25 Each sound can