Editing Meroitic script (section)

==Form and values==
[[File:Detail of a sandstone showing meroitic hieroglyphs in 3 vertical columns, probably referring to Amun. From Meroe. Meroitic period. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London.jpg|thumb|300px|Detail of a sandstone showing Meroitic hieroglyphs in 3 vertical columns, probably referring to Amun. From Meroe. Meroitic period. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London]]
[[File:Pyramids of Meroe in Bajrawiya, Sudan 08.jpg|thumb|300px|Relief inside one of the [[Pyramids of Meroe]] in Bajrawiya, Sudan, with hieroglyphic text.]]
There were two graphic forms of the Meroitic alphasyllabary: monumental hieroglyphs, and a [[cursive]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2009/09250-n3665-meroitic.pdf | title=N3665: Proposal for encoding the Meroitic Hieroglyphic and the Meroitic Cursive scripts in the SMP of the UCS | first1=Michael | last1=Everson | publisher=Working Group Document, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 | date=2009-07-29 }}</ref> The majority of texts are cursive. Unlike Egyptian writing, there was a simple one-to-one correspondence between the two forms of Meroitic, except that in the cursive form, consonants are joined in [[Typographic ligature|ligature]]s to a following vowel '''i'''.

The direction of cursive writing was from right to left, top to bottom, while the monumental form was written top to bottom in columns going right to left. Monumental letters were oriented to face the beginning of the text, a feature inherited from their hieroglyphic origin.

Being primarily alphasyllabic, the Meroitic script worked differently than Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some scholars, such as [[Harald Haarmann]], believe that the vowel letters of Meroitic are evidence for an influence of the [[Greek alphabet]] in its development.

There were 23 letters in the Meroitic alphasyllabary, including four vowels. In the transcription established by Hintze (based on earlier versions by Griffith), they are:
*'''a''' appears only at the beginning of a word
*'''e''' was used principally in foreign names
*'''i''' and '''o''' were used like vowels in the Latin or Greek alphabets.
The fifteen consonants are conventionally transcribed:
*'''p''', '''b''', '''m''', '''d''', '''t''', '''s''', '''n''', '''r''', '''l''', '''k''', '''q''', '''ḫ''', '''ẖ''', '''w''', '''y'''
These consonants are understood to have an inherent vowel value /a/, such that '''p''' should generally be understood as /pa/.
An additional series of characters is understood to represent consonants with inherent vowels other than /a/:
*'''ne''', '''se''', '''te''', '''to'''

These values were established from evidence such as Egyptian names borrowed into Meroitic. That is, the Meroitic letter which looks like an owl in monumental inscriptions, or like a numeral three in cursive Meroitic, we transcribe as '''m''', and it is believed to have been pronounced as [m]. However, this is a historical reconstruction, and while '''m''' is not in much doubt, the pronunciations of some of the other letters are much less certain.

The three vowels '''i a o''' were presumably pronounced /i a u/. '''Ḫ''' is thought to have been a [[voiceless velar fricative|velar fricative]], as the ''ch'' in Scottish ''loch'' or German ''Bach.'' '''H̱''' was a similar sound, perhaps [[uvular consonant|uvular]] as ''g'' in Dutch ''dag'' or [[palatal consonant|palatal]] as in German ''ich''. '''Q''' was perhaps a [[voiceless uvular stop|uvular stop]], as in Arabic ''Qatar''. '''S''' may have been like ''s'' in ''sun''. An /n/ was omitted in writing when it occurred before any of several other consonants within a word. '''D''' is uncertain. Griffith first transcribed it as ''r,'' and Rowan believes that was closer to its actual value. It corresponds to Egyptian and Greek /d/ when initial or after an /n/ (unwritten in Meroitic), but to /r/ between vowels, and does not seem to have affected the vowel '''a''' the way the other alveolar obstruents '''t n s''' did.

Comparing late documents with early ones, it is apparent that the sequences ''sel-'' and ''nel-,'' which Rowan takes to be /sl/ and /nl/ and which commonly occurred with the determiner ''-l-,'' [[assimilation (linguistics)|assimilated]] over time to ''t'' and ''l'' (perhaps /t/ and /ll/).

The only [[punctuation mark]] was a [[word divider|word and phrase divider]] of two to three dots.