The Decipherment of Meroitic

I have deciphered Meroitic based on the most logical path to the decipherment of any dead language. Maurice Pope (1975), made it clear that before a dead language can be deciphered you must have the right theoretical structure to base your inquiry upon it (p. 191). There were three preliminary conditions that must be met before any decipherment: (1) confidence that a script can be deciphered; (2) location of proper names must be determined; (3) the grammatical rules of the target language must be known.

Conditions #1 and #2 were met by Griffith when he deciphered the Meroitic script in 1910, and his discovery of the proper names of the Meroitic gods and individuals in the Meroitic text. Griffith also discovered the directions in which the Meroitic writing was written. The recognition for the solubility of Meroitic was reinforced by the publication of it because it provided up-to-date material on Meroitic and the idea of using the comparative method to decipher Meroitic.

Condition #3 was met in 1978 when Hintze published his work. This allowed me to test other languages similar to Meroitic to find the cognate language.

As I mentioned in the first posting, I searched for a cognate language in the areas where Ural-Altaic was spoken. But I never said it was related to this group. I did find that Meroitic was related to the Tokharian/Kushana language, which is classed in the Indo-European family.

I chose Kushana for two reasons. Firstly, Philostratus in [?], claimed that the Gymnosophists of Kush, who settled along the Nile, descended from the Brahmins of India, having been forced to migrate after the murder of their King. This passage pointed to the Kushana, who left China in 176 B.C., after the murder of their king. Because both of these groups called themselves Kushana, it suggested that they may be related, given the Classical tradition for a migration of "Indians" to Kush. Moreover, C.B. Rawlinson, in "Notes on the early History of Babylonia," 15, pp. 221-222, discussed the Kushites of Asia and Africa.

Using the evidence of classical traditions pointing to the Kushana as possible settlers of Meroë gave me the confidence to compare Kushana to Meroitic. This comparison proved fruitful.

In addition to the classical mention of the Indians settling Meroë, we also have a horde of Kushana coins that were found on the floor of a cave at the present monastery-shine at Debra Demo in modern Ethiopia in 1940. All of this supported a knowledge of the Kushana among the Meroites.

Again, I welcome the challenge to prove my decipherement. Send me a mailing address, and I will provide you with a fuller version of my paper and vocabulary so that you may test the decipherment.

Meroitic is not related to languages spoken in this area. Griffith and Haycock tried to read Meroitic using Nubian and failed. K.H. Priese tried to read the Meroitic text using Eastern Sudani; he also failed.

The key to understanding the use of Kushana/Tokharian to write Meroitic depended on the multi-lingual/ethnic character of the Kushana language. Although this language is considered Indo-European, I believe that it was used as a trade language in Central Asia to give the people of the region a common medium of exchange.

There the Meroitic empire was made up of many groups: the Kusa/Kushites, Nobae, Blemmyans, Medes, and Reherahas according to Hakem and Millet(1). I believe that the Meroites recognized the possibility of using this trade language in Meroitic Kush to unite the diverse people living in the region because it was not of Egyptian origin.

There is disturbing linguistic evidence that hinders the proper placement of Kushana/Tokharian in the I-E family. This results from the fact that it is more closely related to the western branch of I-E, than Indo-Iranian its closest neighbor. The Tokharian isoglosses in I-E are ranked as follows: (1) Germanic, (2) Greek, (3) Indic, (4) Baltic, and (5) Iranian(2). The Tokharian lexicon has also been influenced by Tibetan, Chinese, and Uighur. This is suggestive that Tokharian was a trade language and that Greek and Slavic words came into the "lingua franca" after the Greek conquest of Bactria. The borrowing pattern in Tokharian is consistent with the spread of the Greek language by a small politically dominant minority of Greek settlers into a far larger and previously long-established non–I-E speaking majority.

Below are a few decipherments of Meroitic offering tables. I know that these texts will be unacceptable to some researchers because of the presence of a series of common formulas found within them and new interpretations of specific Meroitic words. I disagree with this view because of the fact that the translation of these formulas is not the same as those given by Griffith or Hintze. They are different translations because these fine scholars did not know the authentic language of the Meroites, so when they gave many selected Meroitic words, they were just guessing as to their actual meaning.

Some of the offering tables I will discuss in this posting are about Blekewiteke, the "pedeme," or high priestess, of Karanog. These inscriptions come from Karanog (see F.L. Griffith, Philadelphia, 1911) and Aniba (see Mohammed Bakr, "Meroitische Inschriften aus der Umgebung von Aniba," [journal?] 14 (1966), pp. 336-346). All of these inscriptions are written in Late Meroitic.

The Meroitic inscriptions are read from right to left. In reading these inscriptions I have discovered that the so-called word divider sign (:) should be read as "ne." The term /ne/ in Meroitic was used to form nouns and also should be read as ‘good’.

The Aniba Offering Table

Woshi-ne Shore i-ne. Yepn^ye qo wi-ne.

Isis the good. Osiris the eternal. Yepan^aye to live forever

Ble[ke]witeke ne ted khe lo wi. Aq

Ble[ke]witeke good the donation spirit body offering honor. Replenish

el o khr ne . teri ke lo wi

gift open dignity good. custom revitalize offering honor

[ w o m ni s-ne] kr o

[guide open measure shining new vivification] dignity opens

ro lo wi-ne. bel ol o kene

withdrawal offering Object of Respect. praise grand open(ing) revitalization

Npte lo wi[ne] pqr l-ne yet

Napata offering Object of Respect crown prince living is capable

mde lo wi-ne sha mlo l-ne

opening with force offering Object of Respect patron innerheart living

de kte lo wi-ne peshto l-ne yet

donation begins dispatch Object of Respect. Peshto living is capable

mde lo wi-ne mlo wi

opening with force offering Object of Respect innerheart honor

ne ml[o mr] to wi-ne atom

good innerheart [lucky] ignites Object of Respect s/he to be (re)born

h_ene p shi h_ tene At -m

to realize prayer satisfying grand rebirth. down the path she

h_ene psh khr k tene

to realize guard/protect(ion) dignity give permission rebirth

kha mlo l-ne h_o lk tene ns

Great innerheart living soul to behold rebirth. mistress

do ke. l-ne d ol ene i

to lead act living donation grand generosity her

do ted i kte ne Woshi ne

to lead the donation go begin Good Isis good.