Meroitic

Historical linguistics, like archaeology, give invaluable insights into the remote past of cultures that left no written testimonies. Unfortunately, both sciences can rarely match their discoveries, as shown by the endless debate about the location of Proto-Indo-Europeans. Stones or potsherds speak no particular language. The article is an enquiry about ancient peoples of Sudan and their languages, especially Meroitic, Ancient Beja and Early Nubian, as far as they can be traced in ancient texts, mainly Egyptian and Napatan documents. It adresses the difficult issue of the origins of Old Nubian/Nobiin and its specificity in the Nubian linguistic family and proposes a new solution.

Presentation originally given at the Oromo Studies 2005 Conference

First published in: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articl ... leID=21760 

Subsequently published in: Oromo Studies Association, 2005 Conference Proceedings, Washington D.C., 2005, 10p 
Online mention: http://oromostudies.org/Proceedings/OSA.Proceeding.2005.pdf 
The present text has been slightly edited. 

This paper deals, among others, with the development of Meroitic studies, the Meroitic civilization, the destruction of the city of Meroe, the dispersal of the Meroitic people after the collapse of their state, the Christianization of the post Meroitic states in Ethiopia (i.e. Northern Sudan / it is to be reminded that the modern state of Abyssinia is fallaciously, illegally and criminally rebaptized 'Ethioipia'), the migration of the remnants of the Meroitic people in the direction of the Blue Nile, and their possible relation of ancestry with the modern Cushitic language speaking Oromo nation. It must be stated clearly at the outset that the issue of Meroitic ancestry of the Oromo nation has not yet been considered, much less published in an academic journal or scholarly books. The paper was first presented in an academic conference organized by the Oromo Studies Association. Footnotes have been added in view of the aforementioned publication (see Pdf).

(Oromo Studies Association, 2005 Conference Proceedings, Washington D.C.) in: The Journal of Oromo Studies, vol. 14 no 1 (February/March 2007), p. 7 - 34
The volume containing the article is available online:
http://oromostudies.org/OSA-USER-FOLDER/josfiles/JOS%20volume%2014%20Number%201%20(2007).pdf
Slightly edited, the article (under the title "The Kushitic / Meroitic Origins of the Oromo Nation") is also available independently here: 
https://www.academia.edu/24273923/The_Meroitic_Ethiopian_Origins_of_the_Modern_Oromo_Nation_-_By_Prof._Dr._Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis and
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/the-meroitic-ethiopian-origins-of-the-modern-oromo-nation/

In 2006 a magnetic survey was conducted in front of B 500, which revealed a series of small temples built perpendicular to the temple dromos, like the lines of small chapels flanking the dromos of the Amun Temple at Meroe. During 2014-15 the first of these temples, called B 561, was excavated together with its attached kiosk, called B 560. The temple, being older than the kiosk.
Temple B 561, presently about half excavated, appears to have been built in the early 1st century BC; it preserves no royal names. It was constructed largely of fired brick, coated with plaster and brightly painted, although little of its painted decoration has survived. Behind its pylon, which fell forward in a single destructive event, it had three interior chambers. The first had two columns, each carved in high relief with water plants and a repeating Meroitic hieroglyphic inscription. The second had stone doorjambs preserving images of Horus and Thoth pouring jars of water toward the doorway, as if to purify those entering. The third chamber, with doorjambs exhibiting images of a king and queen before various gods, contained a central sanctuary, surrounded by a corridor (later converted to rooms). The sanctuary walls were entirely carved in relief, the focus being a scene of Isis suckling the child Horus, with surrounding monstrous deities, many holding knives. Although in poor condition, these reliefs match precisely those in the contemporary mammisis at Dendera, Edfu, and Philae in Egypt, leaving no doubt that B 561 was also a mammisi, closely inspired by them. After the temple's destruction, probably by an earthquake in the second century AD, it appears to have been long occupied for domestic purposes.

Thanks to the use of linguistic comparison and analyses of new inscriptions, Meroitic, the extinct language of the kingdom of Meroe, Sudan, has become increasingly well known. The present article deals with the identification of personal markers and verbal number. It shows how Meroitic, like many other languages, used a former demonstrative, qo, as a 3rd person independent pronoun. An in-depth analysis of the royal chronicles of the kings and princes of Meroe, compared with their Napatan counterparts written in Egyptian, further yields the 1st person singular dependent pronoun e-(later variant ye-), which can be compared with 1st person singular pronoun found in related languages. A stela of Candace Amanishakheto found in Naga is the starting point for identifying the 2nd person singular and plural independent pronouns are and deb. These two morphemes are linked with the most recent reconstructions of Proto-Nubian pronouns and confirm the narrow genetic relation between Nubian and Meroitic. Finally, the reassessment of the so-called "verbal dative"-xe/-bxe shows that this morpheme is simply a former verbal number marker with integrated case endings. This makes it a rare instance of transcategorisation in the cross-linguistic typology of verbal number. Link: https://pages.sandpoints.org/dotawo/article/rilly/

The absence of securely dated texts and monuments has been an obstacle in establishing the sequence and dating of Meroitic rulers.  To compensate a chronology of rulers has been created by hypothetically associating them with a relative sequence of monuments especially the 41 royal pyramids at Meroe. This lack of firm dating and attributions has led to a degree of circular reasoning in the creation of Meroe’s chronology. Investigating degrees of continuity and change in the royal pyramid chapel decorations offers a tool for sequencing pyramids that avoids iterative reasoning. Based on a visual analysis of these decorations in combination with data from Reisner’s excavations plausible solutions to some of the problems in Meroe’s relative chronology are presented; the correct sequence for BEG N 8, N 9 and N 10, the attribution of BEG N 12 to King Taneyidamani, and the relative dating of BAR 2 that challenges its attribution to King Teriteqas.

While the various forms of representation and speculation on the figure of Osiris in Egypt boast a great tradition of studies, the ways in which his worship was articulated outside Egypt are often presented as a marginal aspect of the long-lasting and widespread history of his cult.
Kush—the political and geographical entity raised in Nubia at the end of the Egyptian New Kingdom domination—is an intriguing terrain for investigation of divine igures and religious aspects that have undergone
processes of assimilation or transformation in the transition from the Egyptian to the local culture.
The kings of Twenty-ifth Dynasty started a process of acculturation combining the Egyptian and Nubian forms of materials, religion and ideology; a process resulting not just in a mere import of ready-made products, but rather in an integration and reinterpretation of the Egyptian models within indigenous traditions and cults. This mixture of elements will persist as a typical trait of the Nubian culture, throughout the Napatan and even more the Meroitic period.
In fact, it is especially from the third century ψω onward that we can ind interesting solutions that express the conceptualization and representation of Osiris in the Meroitic religious apparatus.
The syncretic phenomena occurring in the temples of Dodekaschoinos between Nubian, Greco-Roman and Egyptian deities, for instance, give us the opportunity to evaluate new aspects of Osiris, like his association with the Greek Dionysus and, consequently, with the Meroitic Apedemak.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the archaeological and textual evidence related to the elaboration, representation and contextualization of Osiris in Nubia, with particular attention to the Meroitic record.

The facades of the Palace of Natakamani (B1500) at Jebel Barkal were bright-white plastered but interrupted by coloured pillars.
This is shown by the numerous plaster fragments found during the excavation, which respect the typical Meroitic palette: red, yellow, light blue and white.