African Writing Systems

Mandombe Writing is a means by which people record, objectify, and organize their activities and thoughts through images and graphs . Writing is a means to inscribe meanings that are expressed through sounds. Further, writing provides an aspect of historicality. [1] This means that writing facilitates the proper recording and transmissions of events and deeds from one generation to another. Most of the worlds written script originated from the Semitic script. The Greeks converted the Semitic script into what was to become the 'English script' of the western world. and Hebrew retained the basic format of the Semitic script, employing characters and not letters. Chinese script developed uniquely. It is rather interesting to note that no is known to have ever been formed by Europeans. We are very familiar with the African Egyptian hieroglyphic script and the African Ethiopian Geez script, which date as old as 3000 BC and 500 BC years respectively. However forgotten by no coincidence are many other ancient African scripts that are unique and expressive in their own ways. Scripts created and used for hundreds of years from Sudan to . It appears that one of the main reasons why these great African script were lost in the sands of Historical time, is the direct mechanism of the colonial operation. was internationally justified on a premise that the African was less than a human, this stamped by the infamous 1865 'Code Noir'. [2] To this goal, all evidence of African advanced skills would have been suppressed, books destroyed and higher skills silenced.

In a time when only the Nobles of the West could read and write, if a slave, who was portrayed as an animal (still written in the US constitution as 3/5ths a human in the 'three-fifths clause' [3]) could read and write in his native language with advanced skill, it would be impossible to maintain his being less than human. Here we look at some of the great forgotten scripts of the African continent.

Contents [hide]

1 Ethiopic Script 2 Egyptian Script 3 Sudan Script 4 Afan Oromo script 5 Bassa Script 6 Vai Script 7 Mende Script 8 Script 9 Script 10 Bamun Script 11 Kukakui Script 12 N'ko Script 13 14 Shumom Script and Print Press 15 Controversy Ethiopic Script

Ethiopic Script Ethiopic is an African designed as a meaningful and graphic representation of knowledge. It is a component of the African Knowledge Systems and one of the signal contributions made by Africans to the world history and cultures. It is created to holistically symbolize and locate the cultural and historical parameters of the Ethiopian people. The System, in its classic state, has a total of 182 syllographs, which are arranged in seven columns, each column containing 26 syllographs. Ethiopic is a knowledge system because it is brilliantly organized to represent philosophical features, such as ideography, mnumonics, syllography, astronomy, and grammatology. [4]

Egyptian Script

Egyptian Script Sudan Script

Meroitic script

By the third century BC a new indigenous alphabet, the Meroitic, consisting of twenty-three letters, replaced Egyptian script. The is an alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian , used to write the of the Kingdom of Meroë/Kush. It was developed sometime during the Napatan Period (about 700 - 300 BC), and first appears in the 2nd century BC. For a time, it was also possibly used to write the Nubian language of the successor Nubian kingdoms. The Meroitic script is very similar to the Egyptian Writing System. It was used by the Meroe people, a civilization of the Sudan. The system is written from right to left, unlike the Egyptian system which can be written right to left, left to right, and vertically. [5]

Afan Oromo script

Afan Oromo script It is the language by more than 25 million Oromo and neighboring peoples in Ethiopia and Kenya. Older publications refer to the language as "Galla", a term that is resented by Oromo people and no longer used.

Bassa Script

Liberian Bassa script

HISTORY of the Bassa Script, 500+ BC (, West ) Many people today are unaware of the genius of the African. Although they might admit to a complex verbal language structure, it may come as quite a surprise to many that African people have a multitude of written languages. In Liberia the have a written script. The Kpelle, Gola, Lorma, Grebo, Vai and Kissi also are known to have their own written language. Most of these scripts have diminished over time, as a result of abandonment. Had Hanibal visited Liberia in 500 B.C., particularly Kpowin(Tradetown) and Bassa Cove, he would have witnessed the Bassa script in use. The script is called Vah by the Bassas, which is translated to the phrase: To throw sign. Not to be confused with the Vai ethnic group, who also have their own written script as mentioned above. Vah was initially the throwing of sign or signals utilizing the natural environment. Teeth marks would be left on leaves and placed in a discrete location for the intended reader. Messages where also carved in the barks of trees. Eventually this evolved into a complex written language. During the era of the Trans-, many Bassas avoided slave traders by utilizing Vah(Bassa Script). During the colonial, and on through to the neo-colonial period in Africa, a decline in the usage of Vah script caused by external cultural forces, almost brought this written portion of the to extinction. Dr. Flo Darvin Lewis in the 1900s would re-discover the script in South America. Bassas that were sold into now living in Brazil and the West Indies; kept the tradition of writing alive, passing it from generation to generation. Through his travels, Dr. Lewis was astonished to find out that he, being a Bassa himself, knew nothing of any such writing amongst his people back in Liberia. This discovery put Dr. Lewis on a determined path to learn, teach and revive the script in Liberia. Lewis attended Syracuse University and earned a doctorate in Chemistry, where he was known as the African Prince. Dr. Lewis returned to Liberia by way of Dresden, Germany where a company manufactured the first printing press for the Bassa alphabet. In Liberia, he established an institution for learning Vah. Among his students were, former Senator Edwin A. Morgan, Counselors Zacharia Roberts and Jacob Logan. Fear, mis-trust, sabotage and colonial thinking Liberians would lead to Dr. Lewis’ untimely death; leaving an open legacy yet to be completed. [6] [7] Vai Script

Vai script 1819 The actual origins of this script are enmeshed in mythology. This script said to be invented by inspiration by Momolu Duwalu Bukele at about 1819. Some suggest that he developed this script from coming into contact with the Bassa Liberian script in his sojourns. [8]

Mende Script

Mende script

Nsibidi Script

Nsibidi script The Nigerian Nsibidi is an indigenous adaptable and fluid writing system of two dimensional signs, three dimensional forms of pictographs and ideographs and pantomimed gestures. It originated as an esoteric form of knowledge understood by a select group of people mostly members of a secret society in Southeastern Nigeria which some sources link to the Ejagham and later spread to Efik, Igbo, Ibibio, Efut, Annang and Banyang speaking areas.

Some of the signs of the Nsibidi spread to the Caribbean and Brazil during the slave trade.

Tifinagh Script

Libyan Tifinagh script Libya

Bamun Script

Cameroon Bamun script , West Africa Kukakui Script

Kikakui script Sierra Leone

N'ko Script

Nko script

Mandombe Script

Mandombe script Republic of Congo Shumom Script and Print Press

Shumom script Shumom Script and Print Press of Cameroon The Shumom people are the people of Cameroon in West Africa. Their country is located between Nigeria in the West, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Congo Brazzaville in the South and Chad and Central African Republic in the North. Within Cameroon, the land of the Shumom people is located in the northern part. It is a land of massif plateau and mountains, valleys and vast forested land, a part of the great equatorial forest of West and Central Africa. Foumban is the administrative capital of the district. In the beginning of the 20th century or perhaps earlier, the people of Cameroon were able to accomplish one of the most remarkable African achievements of the century: the invention of a self-sustaining and self governing writing system and a Bronze cast printing set device to document the histories of the people. Sultan Ibrahim Njoya, whose father was killed resisting the German invaders, led the invention. The invention that started in the late nineteenth century (1895 or 1896) was completed by the beginning of the 20' century in 1903. By the time of the Germans arrival, the writing system was in use in conjunction with the Bamum language, which is a tonal language, which means the meanings of a word will vary depending upon the with which the sound of the word is uttered. The system went through seven stages of development. The first stage had over five hundred pictographs and the last stage has had only 35 syllographs, graphs designed to represent all the phonetic and tone sounds in the Bamum language of the Shumom people.

King Njoya opened a school in Fumban where many are trained to become literate and promote leaming in their own language. Several manuscripts and documents were produced, including the histories, laws and customs of the people and their neighbors. Two systems of writing were taught at the school: the Royal and the popular scripts. Tragically the most important documents are taken away by colonial masters out of Cameroon and they are housed in the French and British Museums. The Germans and later the French did not want to see the flourishing of a literary tradition among the Bamums. Not only they killed or exiled their leaders; they also violently banned the use of Shumom, thereby condemning the people to colonial dark age. The remarkable accomplishments of the Cameroonians is in line with the long and glorious traditions of the inventions and use of writing systems, perhaps beginning with the hieroglyphics of the Ancient Egyptians whose earliest pictographic writing now dated to be 3400B.C. The Shumom writing system was invented and used in such a participatory democracy where all the members of the society are asked by the king to participate in the project. King Njoya, the able and visionary leader, ordered his constituency to contribute symbols for the writing system. In so doing not only he succeeded in ensuring a wide range of ideographic ideas to choose from, but he also paved the way for eventual acceptance of the system by the whole nation. This process combined with mythology would place the system as permanent cultural asset and legacy of the people. King Njoya mythologized the invention of the Shumom writing system as follows: "When King Njoya was asleep one night he had a dream. A man came and before him saying: 'Oh King, take a wide, flat piece of wood and mark on it a man's hand. Then wash the board and drink the water.' The king took a plank and made a mark as the man directed, and handed it to that man who also made a mark thereon and returned the plank to the King. In the dream there were many people sitting around, all schoolboys, and they had paper in their hands. They all made marks thereon and passed on what they marked to their neighbors.

"When it was daylight the King took a wide plank and marked thereon a man's hand. He then washed the plank with water and drank it, as the man in the dream directed. The King now summoned many of his courtiers and told them to mark out many things and to give names to all these things so that the result would be a book. In this way man's speech could be inaudibly recorded.

"Njoya asked whether the populace would be able to understand this silent speech. His courtiers replied: 'No, if things are done as you wish, no one will be able to interpret these marks.' Njoya asked whether it would not be as well to carry out his suggestions, and they replied: 'It is no use, no one will understand the meaning of these marks.' Njoya said to them: 'Go, sleep and ponder over the matter till it become clear.' "The next day he summoned all his courtiers again and asked them, saying: 'What now do you think about this matter, this book business?' They replied that if he did as he suggested no one would be able to interpret the marks. Njoya said he agreed with them, and told them to leave the matter with him and he would try, and if the problem were too much for him he would abandon it. Nevertheless his courtiers were to make many signs, all different, and to bring them to him. He also made many signs. "The King now collected all these signs, and called in Moma and Isiah (two Mohammedan Mallams) to help him plan. Five times he consulted with these two and by then he understood enough. When Njoya consulted with them again the problem was solved. Then he called together many of his courtiers and taught them the signs. Many people learned and King Njoya was very pleased."2

King Njoya's magnum opus in the royal script ran to 1,100 pages and its replica is now with the Pitt-Rivers Museum of Oxford. The published text regarding the writing system was the combined works of MDW Jeffreys and Madam Dugast of France in 1950 under the title: L'Ecriture des Bamum and it was published in France. King Njoya had also successfully surveyed and produced a map of his nation. This is also a remarkable feat by itself. Just imagine the natural and progressive development of the people of Cameroon without the rude and violent and destructive intervention of European colonialism!

Ref:

1. http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Shumom.html 2. http://books.google.com/books?id=RHfDI4aM5TIC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=bam un+printing+press&source=bl&ots=5j9k99Q86O&sig=- qotof8afOGx3Tfy12Fa3wsnMhg&hl=en&ei=qrbBSvGKF4y- lAe8zMnIBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=bam un%20printing%20press&f=false

Controversy

When many of these scripts were re-discovered, the African historian discoverers were again by no coincidence quickly labeled to have been the formulators of these ancient scripts, and a propaganda tale was spread in all cases that these scripts were invented recently by each discovering researcher in an amusingly identical fashion of them setting out to create these written languages De Novo just to prove that Africans too could create written language, and in all cases they were 'coincidentally' described to have meditated or been aided by visions to carry out this daunting task. This bemusing fallacy has been debunked as evidence of ancient use of these scripts have been found in all cases.

http://nigerianwiki.com/wiki/African_Writing_Systems

Vai

Origin

In the 1820s Dualu Bukele of Jondu, Liberia, was inspired by a dream to create a writing system for the . The syllabary proved popular with the Vai and by the end of the 19th century, most of them were using it. In 1962, the Standardization Committee at the University of Liberia standardized the syllabary.

Used to write

Vai, a member of Mande group of Niger-Congo languages spoken by about 75,000 people in Liberia

Bamum syllabary

The Bamum syllabary was invented in 1896 by King Ibrahim Njoya of the Bamum. The king also collected numerous manuscripts containing the history of his people, and used his script to compile a pharmacopoeia, to design a calendar, and to keep records and for law. He also built schools, libraries and set up a printing press. The first version of the script including 465 symbols, but King Njoya simplified a number of time until it included 73 syllablic signs and 10 numerals. Tone indicators can be added to the signs if necessary. After part of Cameroon came under French control in 1919, the libraries and the printing press were destroyed, many of the books in the were destroyed, and the teaching of the script in schools was banned. After Cameroon became independent in 1960, Nyoja's son and heir, Seidou Njimoluh, collected such Bamum manuscripts and other materials that survived and put them in his father's museum. Today the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project is trying to revive the Bamum script by teaching it to young people. The Bamum language (Shüpamom) is a Benue-Congo language spoken in Cameroon by about 200,000 people. It is also known as Bamoun in French.

Notable features

 Type of writing system: syllabary

 Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines

 Used to write: Bamum

 To write some Bamum combinations of signs are used

Bamum syllabary (A-ka-u-ku)

Mende syllabary

The Mende syllabary was invented in 1921 by Kisimi Kamara (ca. 1890- 1962) of Sierra Leone. Seeing how the British managed to take over his country, Kisimi concluded that their power was partly a result of their . He decided to give his own people that ability. Kisimi claimed he was inspired in a dream to create the Mende syllabary, which he called Ki- ka-ku. During the 1920s and 1930s he run a school in Potoru to teach Ki-ka- ku. The syllabary became a popular method of keeping records and writing letters. During the 1940s the British set up the Protectorate Literacy Bureau in Bo with the aim of teaching the to read and write with a version of the . As a result, usage of Kisimi's syllabary gradually diminished and it was eventually forgotten. Mende is a Niger-Congo language spoken by about 1.26 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Notable features

 Consists of 195 symbols.

 Some syllables here several versions.

 Written from right to left in horizontal lines.

Mende syllabary

Kpelle syllabary

Origin

The was invented during the 1930s by Chief Gbili of Sanoyea, Liberia. It was used to some extent by speakers of Kpelle in Liberia and Guinea during the 1930s and early 1940s but never achieved popular acceptance. Today Kpelle is usually written with a version of the Latin alphabet.

Notable features

 The Kpelle syllabary consists of 88 and is written from left to right in horizontal rows.

 Many of the have more than one form.

Used to write

Kpelle, a member of Mande group of Niger-Congo languages spoken by about 490,000 people in Liberia and around 300,000 people in Guinea.

The Vai Writing System

Clyde Winters Maurice Delafosse mentions that he consulted many literate Vai who claimed that the Vai script was ancient. These Vai also told him that the Vai system of writing was still being used in the mountains to the north. Delafosse did not believe this claim. But he does mention the Vai tradition for an ancient origin of the Vai writing. The informants mentioned by Delafosse were correct. Many marks similar to those contained in the Vai script were found in the mountains further north in the Grotte de Goundaka and even the Sahara which point to the ancient origin of the Vai inscriptions . Below we have the Vai writing system

The informants mentioned by Delafosse were correct. Many marks similar to those contained in the Vai script were found in the mountains further north in the Grotte de Goundaka and even the Sahara which point to the ancient origin of the Vai inscriptions (See M.E. Paris, "Recherches sur l'origine de marques di tribus", Bull de l'IFAN, ser B.(1953) pp. 1619-1632; and G. Szumowski, "Vestiges prehistoriques dans la region de Bandiagara", Notes Africaine, (1955) pp. 19-23).

The Vai tradition for an ancient origin of this syllabary recorded by Delafosse was confirmed by the Oued Mertoutek inscription. This inscription is written in Libyco-Berber which was the ancient writing of thge Mande people. The Libyco-Berber inscriptions predate the inscriptions you discuss above. Lionel Galand, Inscriptions Libyques (Paris,1968,) and H. Lhote, Les Touaregs du Hoggar (Paris,1944, ) discussed these ancient inscriptions. Both Lhote (pp.141-145) and Galand (p.11) made it clear that Libyco-Berber inscriptions were definately not written in Libyan (Punic, Numidian, etc.) or Taureg . The fact that they can be read in Mande support the ancient Mande origin for this writing.

http://olmec98.net/libyco.htm