MEROITIC LANGUAGE

language spoken in the ancient city of Meroe and the surrounding area (in present-day Sudan). Dating from a period extending from about 200 BC until the 4th century AD, Meroitic inscriptions are written in two types of script: linear, or demotic, for general records; and hieroglyphic for royal or religious inscriptions on stone. They were usually written from right to left, as with Egyptian hieratic and demotic scripts. Inscriptions were sometimes written vertically. These scripts seem to have been inspired and influenced by their Egyptian counterparts, and in some cases the signs used are identical in Egyptian and Meroitic. Extant texts in Meroitic include funerary inscriptions (which compose the largest group of texts), captions accompanying temple reliefs, graffiti, and several lengthy royal memorial texts; a few papyrus fragments have also been preserved in the relatively dry region of Lower Nubia. A number of new texts were discovered during the excavations occasioned by the building of the Aswan High Dam. Although a small number of Meroitic words and a small portion of the grammar are known, the language remains largely undeciphered. Nothing is known for certain about the relation of Meroitic to other languages, although some scholars believe the language to be related either to Nubian or to the Eastern Sudanic languages.