Editing Meroitic script (section)

==Principles==
Meroitic was a type of alphabet called an [[abugida]]: The vowel /a/ was not normally written; rather it was assumed whenever a consonant was written alone. That is, the single letter '''m''' was read /ma/. All other vowels were overtly written: the letters '''mi''', for example, stood for the syllable /mi/, just as in the Latin alphabet. This system is broadly similar to the [[Brahmic family|Indian abugidas]] that arose around the same time as Meroitic.

===Griffith and Hintze===
Griffith identified the essential abugida nature of Meroitic when he deciphered the script in 1911. He noted in 1916 that certain consonant letters were never followed by a vowel letter, and varied with other consonant letters. He interpreted them as [[syllable|syllabic]], with the values ''ne, se, te,'' and ''to.'' ''Ne,'' for example, varied with ''na.'' ''Na'' could be followed by the vowels ''i'' and ''o'' to write the syllables ''ni'' and ''no,'' but was never followed by the vowel ''e.''

He also noted that the vowel ''e'' was often omitted. It often occurred at the ends of Egyptian loanwords that had no final vowel in [[Coptic language|Coptic]]. He believed that ''e'' functioned both as a [[schwa]] {{IPA|[ə]}} and a [[virama|"killer" mark]] that marked the absence of a vowel. That is, the letter '''m''' by itself was read {{IPA|[ma]}}, while the sequence '''me''' was read {{IPA|[mə]}} or {{IPA|[m]}}. This is how [[Ethiopic script|Ethiopic]] works today. Later scholars such as Hitze and Rilly accepted this argument, or modified it so that ''e'' could represent either {{IPA|[e]}} or schwa–zero.

It has long been puzzling to epigraphers why the syllabic principles that underlie the script, where every consonant is assumed to be followed by a vowel ''a,'' should have special letters for consonants followed by ''e.'' Such a mixed abugida–syllabary is not found among the abugidas of India, nor in Ethiopic. [[Old Persian cuneiform]] script is somewhat similar, with more than one inherent vowel, but is not an abugida because the non-inherent vowels are written with full letters, and are often redundantly written after an inherent vowel other than /a/.

===Millet and Rowan===
Millet (1970) proposed that Meroitic ''e'' was in fact an [[epenthetic vowel]] used to break up Egyptian [[consonant cluster]]s that could not be pronounced in the Meroitic language, or appeared after final Egyptian consonants such as ''m'' and ''k'' which could not occur finally in Meroitic. Rowan (2006) takes this further and proposes that the glyphs ''se, ne,'' and ''te'' were not syllabic at all, but stood for consonants {{IPA|/s/}}, {{IPA|/n/}}, and {{IPA|/t/}} at the end of a word or morpheme (as when followed by the [[determiner (linguistics)|determiner]] ''-l;'' she proposes Meroitic finals were restricted to [[alveolar consonant]]s such as these. An example is the Coptic word {{Coptic|ⲡⲣⲏⲧ}} ''prit'' "the agent", which in Meroitic was transliterated ''perite (pa-e-ra-i-te).'' If Rowan is right and this was pronounced {{IPA|/pᵊrit/}}, then Meroitic would have been a fairly typical abugida. She proposes that Meroitic had three vowels, {{IPA|/a i u/}}, and that {{IPA|/a/}} was raised to something like {{IPA|[e]}} or {{IPA|[ə]}} after the alveolar consonants {{IPA|/t s n/}}, explaining the lack of orthographic ''t, s, n'' followed by the vowel letter ''e.''

Very rarely does one find the sequence [[Consonant|C]][[Vowel|V]]C, where the C's are both labials or both velars. This is similar to consonant restrictions found throughout the Afro-Asiatic language family, suggesting to Rowan that there is a good chance Meroitic was an [[Afro-Asiatic language]] like Egyptian.

Rowan is not convinced that the system was completely alphabetic, and suggests that the glyph ''te'' also may have functioned as a [[determinative]] for place names, as it frequently occurs at the end of place names that are known not to have a /t/ in them. Similarly, ''ne'' may have marked royal or divine names.