Meroitic Research Guidance 2019

Meroitic Research Guidance 2019
This is a Meroitic spoiler sheet intended to point a researcher towards complete
    decipherment of Meroitic. Meroitic is an East Saharan language related to
    Berti and Beria/Zaghawa. If you study those languages, you will be able to
    translate from the entire corpus by following these principles. Meroitic has
    been compared to Beja, Nara, Nubian, East Sudanic, Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European
    , Nilo-Saharan and Ural–Altaic without success.
Summary by the discredited original researcher: "DMM". Prerequisite research on
    and corrections to the historical linguistics of Daju, Nubian, Saharan,
    Nilotic, Nuba Mountain languages and more is withheld in order to contest
    authorship.
Omitted but held by the author: bibliographies, database of deciphered lexicon,
    incomplete translations of the REM.
§ 1 Historical and cultural spoilers are the following:
    * The Kushites became the Blemmyes (Meroitic: mlimr) and were displaced from
        the Nile by the Nobatae, settlers from Northern Kordofan and antecedents
        to the Nobatians. The Blemmyes spent centuries unsuccessfully trying to
        retake their homelands from the Nobatea under the name "Blemmyes". Blemmye
        was misapplied to the Beja by Coptic and Greek sources but it properly
        refers to the post-Kushite Blemmyes.
    * Those who weren't assimilated were displaced West may have become the Berti
        (Mer-ti) or were assimilated into them.
    * The late Meroites were sun worshipers. Apidemak/apødømc is the indigenous
        Meroitic War God. His name means "Spirit/God of Intercession" which
        explains his martial aspect. The pre-Egyptian Meroitic religion was
        anamistic. The man-eating beast-headed ogre of modern Teda-Zaghawa
        mythology is a retention of some Proto-Saharan spirit related to apødømc.
    * "Kaj" in the Kanuri diwan is probably Kush.
    * Meroitic succession was matrilinear after the areal custom traditional to
        the ruling monarchs or chiefs of the Kunama, Nara, Berti, Midob, Nile
        Nubians and others. The next King must be a descendant of a previous
        Candace but not the current one. The King is elected by council from the
        number of eligible heirs. If neighboring traditions are taken as a guide,
        the eldest son of the King's sister is the likely heir but this is not
        obligatory. It is therefore difficult to reconstruct the family tree of a
        named Meroitic king unless his female relations are also known.
    * Meroitic funerary stele depict Nephthys, Anubis, libation and lithomancy
        stones. The last is what the spheres and hollow insets that sometimes
        appear are for. The pagan custom of funerary stones survived in Darfur
        until the 20th century. The stones are taken from hallowed rock revered by
        a clan. They are used to commune with or invoke the diseased in lithomancy
        rituals.
    * Working hypothesis: Berti and Meroitic are both "Kushite" languages but
        Meroitic was the northeastern dialect and Berti was the southwestern
        dialect.
Sample vocabulary
cdcø : Candace (Queen Mother)
abr : man, male
acendd : Lord ('Akinadd' = Lord of Acina)
mc : god
lg : a, certain
wøtrre : great
ye : and
liwe : is (copula)
demø : sheep, ram
mnetirø : Amun name
§ 2 Some Useful Texts
Rilly, C. 2007. La langue du royaume de Méroé: Un panorama de la plus ancienne
    culture écrite d'Afrique subsaharienne. (Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes
    Études, 344.) Paris: Honoré Champion.
Rowan, K. 2006. Meroitic: A Phonological Investigation. (Doctoral dissertation,
    University of London.
Eide, T., Hägg, T., Pierce, R. H., Török, L. Fontes Historiae Nubiorum.
Hintze, F. 1979. Beiträge zur meroitischen Grammatik. (Meroitica, 3.) Berlin:
    Akademie-Verlag.
Hofmann, I. 1981. Material für eine Meroitische Grammatik. (Beiträge zur
    Afrikanistik, 13.) Wien: Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie der
    Universität Wien.
Jakobi, A. and Crass, J. 2004. Grammaire du beria (langue saharienne). (Nilo
    -Saharan: Linguistic Analyses and Documentation, 18.) Köln: Cologne: Rüdiger
    Köppe.
Khidir, Z. F. 2005. Bases et radicaux verbaux: Déverbatifs et déverbaux du Beria
    (langue saharienne). (Nilo-Saharan, 20.) Cologne: Köppe.
Tubiana, J. 1963. Note sur la langue des Zaghawa. In Zasedanija sekcij XVI-XX, 614
    -619. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo Vostočnoj Literatury.
Petráček, K. 1965. Phonetik, Phonologie und Morphonologie der Berti-(Siga) Sprache
    in Dār Fūr (Sūdān). Archiv Orientální 33.
Petráček, K. 1966. Morphologie (Nomen, Pronomen) der Berti-(Siga) Sprache in Dār
    Fūr (Sūdān). Archiv Orientální 34.
Petráček, K. 1987. Berti or Sagato-a (Saharan) Vocabulary. Afrika und Übersee 70.
    163-193.
Holý, L. 1974. Neighbours and Kinsmen: A study of the Berti peoples of Darfur.
    London: C. Hurst.
Arkell 1911 (manuscripts)
MacMichael, H. A. 1922. A history of the Arabs in the Sudan: and some account of
    the people who preceded them and of the tribes inhabiting Dārfūr. Cambridge:
    Cambridge University Press.
Lukas, J. 1953. Die Sprache der Tubu in der zentralen Sahara. (Veröffentlichungen
    des Instituts für Orientforschung der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
    Berlin, 14.) Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften.
LeCoeur, C. 1950. Dictionnaire ethnographique téda, précédé d'un lexique français
    -téda. (Mémoires de l'IFAN (Inst. Français de l'Afrique Noire), 9.) Paris.
Cyffer, N. 1995. Die Saharanischen Sprache - Innere und äußere Beziehungen. In
    Fleisch, Axel and Otten, Dirk (eds.), Sprachkulturelle und historische
    forschungen in Afrika: Beiträge zum 11.~Afrikanistentag, Köln, 19.-21
    .~September 1994, 103-118. Köln: Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
Ortman (two manuscripts on northern Teda)
Blench, R. editor. Manga dictionary.
Blench, R. editor. Beria dictionary.
§ 3 Orthography
Two scripts: demotic/cursive, hieroglyphic. Hieroglyphic is older. Hieroglyphic is
    borrowed from Egyptian. Meroitic demotic is a shorthand of Meroitic
    hieroglyphic. There are 23 signs in total.
# use "Unifont Upper" or any Meroitic capable font.
# import as csv for easy reading
"hieroglyphic","𐦠","𐦡","𐦢","𐦣","𐦤","𐦥","𐦦","𐦧","𐦨","𐦩","𐦪","𐦫","𐦬"
    ,"𐦭","𐦯","𐦱","𐦲","𐦳","𐦮","𐦴","𐦵","𐦶","𐦷"
"demotic","𐦀","𐦁","𐦂","𐦃","𐦄","𐦅","𐦆","𐦈","𐦉","𐦊","𐦌","𐦏","𐦐","𐦑"
    ,"𐦓","𐦕","𐦖","𐦗","𐦒","𐦘","𐦚","𐦜","𐦝"
"gardiner. no.","A1","H6","A30","F1","M17","V4","E1","Q3","G17","N35","M23","D21"
    ,"E22","AA1","M8","R34","G39","N29","W11","V13","O4","F16","D4"
"mero. trad.","a","e","i","o","y","w","b","p","m","n","ne","r","l","ḫ","s","se"
    ,"k","q","h̲","t","te","to","d"
"mero. actual.","a","ø","e","i","y","w","b","f","m","n","nø","r","l","j","s","sø"
    ,"c","k","g","t","tø","ti","d"
"eg. reading.","jnx, wj","šw","N/A","kꜣ","y","wa, wꜣ","b","pʰ","m","n, mw","sw"
    ,"r","l, rw","ḫ","š","z, s","gb","q","g","t, ʦ","h","ỉb","ir, jrt"
"depiction","man","feather","worshiping man","head of cattle","reeds","laso"
    ,"foot","mat","owl","water","sedge grass","mouth","lion","sieve","marsh(wet
    season)","door knot","bird(goose)","hill","pot/gourd","tethering rope"
    ,"shelter","horn","eye"
It is evident that the majority of hieroglyphs were borrowed because they
    approximated a native Meroitic sound. Where the Meroitic sound fundamentally
    differs from the Egyptian sound, we may assume that the hieroglyph was chosen
    according to the rebus principle. The exceptional hieroglyphs are a, ø, e, i,
    nø, c, tø and ti, i.e. the vowels, one open consonant and three closed
    consonants. The rebus etymons are proposed below:
a
from the etymon abr, probably *ɔ initial, from the Meroitic word for person c.f.
Zaghawa 'ɔ' < PESah *ɔŋ
ø
unknown; perhaps conceptually from feather, a 'light' sound
e
unknown
i
The hieroglyphic is a head of cattle, a denomination of value. The demotic variant
    is the numeral "1".
c
from the Meroitic word for a rapturous bird (hawk, falcon, etc.). The Zaghawa word
    resembles the Egyptian.
nø
grass, sedge
tø
unknown
ti
horn/tusk (of a non-domestic animal)
These derivations are all tentative. Better explanations for at least some of
    these eight exceptions will be arrived at once a better knowledge of the
    Meroitic lexicon is achieved.
For the greater part of the duration of the literate Meroitic period, 'b' was
    written with an an indigenous phonogram: a cow. The original phonogram for 'b'
    , a foot, featured in the table above, is attested in only a very small
    (presumed earliest) minority  of items from the hieroglyphic corpus.
's' has an archaic variant 𐦰 in the hieroglyphic.
Reading
Meroitic occupies an intermediate position between an abjad (such as the Egyptian
    abjad on which it is based) and an alphasyllabary. Meroitic never developed
    enough vowel signs to constitute a true alphasyllabary. For this reason, in
    Meroitic, just as in Egyptian, it is not always possible to vocalise a word
    from text alone.
Meroitic does not apply hieroglyphs ideographically; each glyph encodes a
    character with a fixed sound value, and never an idea, word, determinant or a
    sequence of sounds longer than a syllable of the structure CV(r/n).
There are 23 signs excluding variants of a sign. 4 vowel signs (<a>, <ø>, <e> and
    <i>) and 19 consonantal signs. One vowel sign, <a> 𐦠 𐦀, can only occur in
    word initial position. 4 out of 19 consonantal signs are closed consonant
    signs, the rest are open consonant signs.
The Meroitic word is a sequence of consonantal signs and, optionally, vowel signs.
    The principles are as follows:
* open consonant before open consonant (CoCo): inherent nuclear vowel can be a, o,
    u (ɛ, a, ɔ, o, ʊ, u)
* closed consonant before any consonant (CcCc or CcCo): consonant cluster (CCV-)
    initial or syllable boundary (CV.CV)
* open consonant before vowel (CoV): vowel sign gives the nucleus of a syllable
    starting with that consonant
* word ending in closed consonant (-Cc): word ends in that consonant
The following sequences are illegal:
* closed consonant before vowel (CcV)
* vowel before vowel (VV)
Other
* Two adjacent open consonantal signs should always be vocalised as two syllables
    and not as a geminate.
* Sometimes a coda noun is unwritten but was pronounced. This is Meroitic's
    regressive assimilation law and famously affects the root cdcø 'Candace'
    (føsøti and dd). It affects coda -n and -r. It is analogous to rhoticism in
    Europe and nunation in Semitic.
* In general, Meroitic consonant clusters are rare and surface as single consonant
    signs in the orthography.
Two characters, <ø> and <w>, are special because of their dual function. <ø> was
    originally a weak vowel sign but developed a secondary 'null vowel' function
    as the script matured. The 'null vowel' signals that the terminating syllable
    ends with the preceding consonant (i.e. the syllable is not vowel final). w is
    the consonantal counterpart to the null vowel sign. It can signal that the
    following syllable is vowel initial (or starts with a velar fricative, an
    unwritten initial or intervocalic sound analogous to the glottal stop in other
    languages). This reading of <w> may be phrased as "silent w" or "null w".
Finally,
Meroitic did not mark sentence-endings overtly. Texts appear in a stream.
Meroitic does not use punctuation except for the word divider.
Meroitic is unigraphic, there are no miniscule or majiscule letters.
Clitic morphemes are sometimes separated from their root.
§ 4 Phonology
Consonants are:
m   n
b   t d   c j   k g
f         s
 r l w    y
Vowels are:
a        o
       ɔ
ɛ    e
   ɪ   ʊ u
     i
(minimal reconstruction)
The phonemic inventory of the spoken Meroitic language had at least 9 vowels and
    14 consonants. The places of articulation are bilabial, dental, palatal and
    velar. There are no uvular or pharyngeal consonants. Four ATR± pairs (ɛ ← e, ɔ
    ← o, ʊ ← u, ɪ ← i). Advanced tongue root harmony is the cause of spelling
    instabilities in many Meroitic words. These sometimes occur within the same
    text.
14 consonants can be internally derived from the script. The phonemic status of
    the expected Proto-Saharan consonants /ɲ/, /ŋ/ and /h/ is not evidenced in the
    orthography and so their presence in the spoken language cannot be determined.

# /ɲ/ and /h/ do not appear to be phonemic in Berti either based on surviving data
    .
Other
In general, Meroitic consonant clusters are rare and surface as single consonant
    signs in writing.
Meroitic was almost certainly a tonal language but tone is unmarked.
Consonants
sound: /m/ bilabial nasal plosive
sign: m 𐦨 𐦉
sound: /n/ nasal plosive
sign: n 𐦩 𐦊  nø 𐦪 𐦌
sound: /b/ bilabial plosive
sign: b 𐦦 𐦆
sound: /t/ voiceless dental plosive
sign: t 𐦴 𐦘 tø 𐦵 𐦚 ti 𐦶 𐦜
sound: /d/ voiced dental plosive
sign: d 𐦷 𐦝
d is by some scholars challenged as being a rhotic consonant because that is how
    it is often encoded in Egyptian and Greek. Griffth was uncertain of its
    quality and originally transcribed it as 'z' although only as a placeholder.
The character is primarily a dental consonant, not rhotic one. /d/ is a phonemic
    sound independent of /t/. /d/ apparent polyvalency is a consequence of the /rd
    / consonant cluster being written with d in Meroitic.
sound: /c/ voiceless palatal plosive
sign: c 𐦲 𐦖
trad: k
Traditionally Meroitic's mystery third velar consonant.
sound: /ɟ/ voiced palatal plosive
sign: j 𐦭 𐦑
trad: ḫ h
Traditionally Meroitic's mystery forth velar consonant. It is the voiceless
    palatal velar plosive. It is variously approximated in Egyptian by 'g' or 'k'
    because the native Egyptian 'j' is an affricate as in English. The Proto
    -Saharan phoneme is palatal, however, not velar.
In areal perspective, the Omdurman-Khartoum Arabic pronunciation of 'jim' is the
    same phoneme. Griffith associated this character with the Old Nubian letter Ⳟ
     'NG' /ŋ/ but that letter is correctly innovated from Graeco-Coptic gamma: Ⲅ
    'G'.
sound: /k/ voiceless velar plosive
sign: k 𐦳 𐦗
trad: q
Traditional 'k' is actually is a palatalised velar stop, /c/, transcribed 'c' in
    our system. It is not the primary phonogram for k. It is the first and last
    consonant in Candace.
sound: /g/ voiced velar plosive
sign: g 𐦮 𐦒
trad: ẖ x
This hieroglyphic sign is identical to the Egyptian phonogram for the same sound.
    The fortis-lentis velar contrast is weaker in Sudanese languages than it was
    in Egyptian language. Foreign 'k' is often realised as Meroitic 'g' in writing
    . When "weak", this sound has an intervocalic allophone /ɣ/, the voiced velar
    fricative, which is why it often alternates with j in the spelling of words
    such as 'mge'/'mje' .
sound: /f/ bilabial fricative
sign: f 𐦧 𐦈
sound: /s/ alveolar sibilant
sign: s 𐦯 𐦓 sø  𐦱 𐦕
sound: /j/ palatal approximant
sign: y 𐦥 𐦅
sound: /r/ rhotic consonant
sign: r 𐦫 𐦏
The basic rhotic consonant.
sound: /ɺ/ alveolar lateral flap
sign: l 𐦬 𐦐
A rare sound markedly different from European l. In the modern Zaghawa orthography
    it may be written: as l, R or ṛ, to contrast it from regular /r/.
sound: /w/ labular approximant
sign: w 𐦥 𐦅
The labular glide but can also encode a null consonant, when its medial vowel is
    "wi" or "we" as in the words: 'wese' <ese> 'wis' <esa> 'Isis'. The "harsh"
    syllabic break in Saharan is not glottal so the sound cannot correctly be
    rendered as a glottal stop. A velar fricative is a closer sound to the
    underlying one.
Sound equivalences
It was correspondences between the throne names and titles of Kushites transcribed
    in both Egyptian and Meroitic that allowed Griffith to confirm the sound
    equivalences above. A few of these are given below.
natacamane
meaning: theophonic Amun-based anthronym
Egyptian: ntk-i͗mn
Meroitic traditional: ntḫmni
Meroitic actual: ntjmne
apedemac
meaning: a theonym
Egyptian: iprmk
Meroitic traditional: apedemk
Meroitic actual: afødømc
tewisti
meaning: loanword from Egyptian: 'adoration', 'obeisance'
Egyptian: tꜣ-wšte
Meroitic traditional: tewisti
Meroitic actual: tøweŝte
REM 0060 demonstrates that the demotic and hieroglyphic variants of the script
    have 1:1 equivalence although this fact was established by Meroticists before
    its documentation.
§ 5 Position
Meroitic's position is triangulated from three sound laws and two other minor
    indications:
1) Proto-Saharan *cu undergoes fortention in Meroitic and all East Saharan
    languages.
This is evidenced in the roots: name and bird.
mnetirø [REM 0040]
throne name (= Amun name)
c.f.
Berti.  tirr 'name'
Zagawa-Kube.  tɪ́r 'name'
Dazaga.  cur 'name'
Kanuri.  cû 'name'
tøfø [REM 0355]
bird
c.f.
Zagawa-Guruf-Dirong.  tàrbʊ 'bird'
Zagawa-Kube.  tàrfʊ 'bird'
Dazaga.  còfɨrí 'bird'

2) Meroitic does not elide Proto-Saharan *s in initial position. This sound change
    affects Zaghawa. Although this could have affected Zaghawa in the interceding
    centuries, non-lexical evidence precludes the possibility of Zaghawa being
    linearly descended from Meroitic.
sib [REM 0094]
(political title)
c.f.
Zagawa-Guruf-Dirong.  ob~ib 'prince'
3) The rebus etymon of hieroglyphic 𐦆 and demotic 'b' is 'ox' (=cow/cattle),
    replacing the Egyptian phonogram 𐦇 'b'. The sound change *f -> b is only
    known to affect Berti. This sound change occurs subsequent to an earlier Berti
    sound change: *b -> m. # Non-standard dialects of Zaghawa must be reviewed,
    some evidence this change affects Girung-Duruf (Central Zaghawa) but I have no
    lexical data for this dialect. The Zaghawan phone could just be an allophone.
In all Saharan languages the root "ox" is the gender-neutral designation. A female
    cow is marked with the female suffix.
c.f.
first letter in ox/cow
Berti.  firr 'cow'
Zagawa-Kube.  híṛí 'ox'
Teda.  för 'cow'
Kanuri.  fê 'cow'
4) Meroitic has -#, where -ŋ occurs in Proto-Saharan. The correspondence set for
    the Proto-Saharan *ŋ in coda position for Kanuri/Tubu/Zaghawa/Berti is: m/m/#
    /ŋ. This forms an isogloss around Meroitic and Zaghawa and gives (weak)
    negative evidence of linear descent to Berti.
5) In Berti, PESah. *b becomes *m. Meroitic could to be an m- language if mli is
    indeed cognate with the Zaghawa ethnym and Berti xenonym.
The typology of Meroitic is typical of the Saharan language family.
* The basic word order is SOV.
* The most common syllable structure is CV. VCV, CVC and CVCV are permissible. *
    Meroitic does not allow for consonant clusters.
* The morphosytax of the language is primarily agglunitive-fusional.
* Adjectives follow their nouns.
* Adjectives are indeclinable.
* Genitives follow the nouns that they govern.
* Meroitic has only two numbers, singular and plural. Number is unmarked in the
    script. Probably marked by tone or ablaut as in Zaghawa.
* Laterals and rhotic consonants are almost never word initial, as in Zaghawa.
* ATR vowel harmony in lexical roots
* ATR symmetrical vowel inventory
* phonological inventory (absence of clicks, prenasalisation, emphatic consonants;
    affricates rare; sibilants marginal; 'c' and 'j' are palatals not affricates)
* Moveable k-
* No gender
* No noun classes
Meroitic ethnymy matrix
"English","Arabic","Kanuri","Kanembu","Teda-Daza (Tubu)","Zaghawa (Kube)","Berti"
"Kanuri","bornu  kanuri ","kanurí (language), kanúri (adjective), bornubu"
    ,"kanuri","aga","nil","?"
"Kanembu","bornu kanem","kanembu","kanembu","auʃe","?","?"
"Tubu (Teda, Daza)","goranī, tūbū","təwo [underlying b]","?","teda, daza","kaɟa
    (lanuage)","?"
"Zaghawa","zaghawa","nil","zaghawa","? (Zaghawa) [see lukas]","beṛi beli (Bedeyat
    )","Meríto"
"Bideyat","bideyat, zaghawa (Chad)","nil","nil","?","tubeki","?"
"Berti","zaghawa, berti","nil","nil","-","berti","Sìgáato"
§ 6 Core Morphemes
-ye : and
ki : this
-ki : for/of (synthetic genitive)
-kiwe : this is for
-lg : a certain (article)
wettri/kettri : great
-li : copula for the third person
-l : dative
-le : forms adjective from nouns
-sø : forms adjectives from nouns (predicates)
-tø : location
-ñye : relativiser
økø- : (class II?) verbal prefix
-bj- : verb has multiple arguments
-dj- : born (verbal stem)
-rc- : engender (verbal stem)
-fs- : grow (verbal stem)
-mdø- : serve (verbal stem)
mli : Meroite
-cøtø : imperfective aspect
yøt- : causative
tø- : valency modifier
§ 7 Meroitic gloss
Blemmye
An archaic name for Zaghawa-speaking nomads in use from the 3rd to the 8th
    centuries. It is is a cognate of Meroitic mlimr 'Meroite' although of
    uncertain etymology. Using the same concatenative morphology that is
    productive in Zaghawa: beli=a 'Zaghawa language', beli=ba 'Zaghawa country',
    thus by analogy pre-Zaghawa *beli=ɔm 'Zaghawa people'. Beli suffices for
    'Zaghawa people' today. Alternatively, from beri=meri, but only if the second
    element is a xenonym from Berti.
Whether Blemmyes constitute Kushites is debatable. Most historians identify the
    Blemmyes with the Beja (Beja. Bedawi, Gk. Bogalos), a nomadic Cushitic
    -speaking people from the Red Sea. This follows the indiscriminate use of
    Blemmye to refer to both the the Blemmyes proper and the Beja ("Sire, il n'y a
    pas de Blemmyes.").
Acina
The likely name for the Meroitic state that existed during the literate period. It
    forms a part of the preferred title of most Meroitic Kings: Acendd <Acina Da(r
    )da> 'Lord/Ruler of Acina'. Acendd appears on all three of the long-form stele
    albeit with different spellings. Acina is sometimes translated as 'Lower
    Nubia' after the Roman conception.
§ 8 Research
* Borogat dialect of Zaghawa
* Wegi, Artaj and Dirong-Giruf dialects of Zaghawa
* conservative northern dialects of Teda
* Zaghawa refugees in Israel, Belgium and France
* Berti rememberers' studies (from elders who heard Berti spoken)
* conservative Nigerien Kanuri dialects
* intermediate dialects of Kanuri and Kanembu like Suwurti
* Old Kanembu