Editing Meroitic script (section)

===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/.