Old Nubian language
Encyclopedia
Old Nubian is an ancient variety of Nubian
, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century (the most recent known text was written in 1485). It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin
and related to other Nubian languages such as Dongolawi. It was used throughout the medieval Christian
kingdom of Makuria
and its satellite Nobadia. The language is preserved in at least a hundred pages of documents, mostly of a religious nature, written using a modified form of the Coptic
script; the best known is The Martyrdom of Saint Menas
.
nomads who occupied the Nile
between the First and Third Cataract
s and the Makorae nomads who occupied the land between the Third and Fourth Cataracts following the collapse of Meroë
sometime in the 4th century. The Makorae were a separate tribe who eventually conquered or inherited the lands of the Noba: they established a Byzantine
-influenced state called Makuria
which administered the Noba lands separately as the eparchy
of Nobadia. Nobadia was converted to Monophysite Christianity by the priests Julian and Longinus, and thereafter received its bishops from the Pope of Alexandria.
Old Nubian is one of the oldest written African languages
but was used only sporadically. The civil administration and legal records tended to employ Greek
, while the church leadership (originally all Egyptians) were fluent in Coptic
. Over time, more and more Old Nubian began to appear in both secular and religious documents, and the language also influenced the use of Greek and Coptic in the region (eg, some confusion of Greek grammatical genders & use of variant verb tenses). The consecration documents found with the remains of Archbishop Timotheos suggest, however, that Greek and Coptic continued to be used into the late 14th century, by which time Arabic was also in widespread use.
variant of the Coptic alphabet
, including three unique letters: /ɲ/ and /w/ are both apparently derived from Meroitic script
; /ŋ/ is thought to be a ligature
of two Greek gamma
s.
Old Nubian made extensive use of nomina sacra
. Abbreviation was also used more generally throughout the language: in addition to nomina sacra formulas, a line over a letter could indicate:
The sound /i/ could be written or ; /u/ was normally written ου. In diphthongs, a dieresis was sometimes used over ι to indicate the semivowel
y. Geminate consonants were written double; long vowels were usually not distinguished from short ones.
Modern Nobiin is a tonal language: if Old Nubian was as well, the values were not marked.
Punctuation marks included a high dot •, sometimes substituted by a double backslash \\ , used roughly like an English period
or colon
, a slash / used like a question mark
, and a double slash // sometimes used to separate verses.
, nor any article
s. The noun
consists of a stem to which grammatical case
suffix
es and postpositions are added; the main ones are:
The most common plural is in -gu-; eg uru-gu-na "of kings", or gindette-gu-ka "thorns (object
)", becoming -agui- in the predicative. Rarer plurals include -rigu- (eg mug-rigu-ka "dogs (obj.)" (predicative -regui-) and -pigu-.
s are:
Demonstratives include in- "this", man- "that"; interrogatives include ngai- "who?", min- "what?", islo "where?", iskal "how?".
has five main forms: present
, two different preterite
s, future
, and imperative
. For each of these, there are subjunctive and indicative forms. It conjugates according to person, eg for doll- "wish" in the present tense:
Literally: "Rock and-when-they-rolled-away Jesus eye pair high raising he-said father I-thank you."
Translated: "And when they rolled away the rock, Jesus, raising his eyes high, said: Father, I thank you."
Nubian languages
The Nubian language group, according to the most recent research by Bechhaus-Gerst comprises the following varieties:# Nobiin ....
, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century (the most recent known text was written in 1485). It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin
Nobiin language
Nobiin is a Northern Nubian language of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. ‘Nobiin’ is the genitive form of Nòòbíí ‘Nubian" and literally means ‘ of the Nubians"...
and related to other Nubian languages such as Dongolawi. It was used throughout the medieval Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
kingdom of Makuria
Makuria
The Kingdom of Makuria was a kingdom located in what is today Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. It was one of a group of Nubian kingdoms that emerged during the decline of the Aksumite Empire, which it had been part of from approximately 4BC to AD 950...
and its satellite Nobadia. The language is preserved in at least a hundred pages of documents, mostly of a religious nature, written using a modified form of the Coptic
Coptic alphabet
The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language...
script; the best known is The Martyrdom of Saint Menas
Saint Menas
Saint Menas , the Martyr and Wonder-worker, is one of the most well-known Egyptian saints in the East and the West, due to the many miracles that are attributed to his intercession and prayers...
.
History
Old Nubian had its source in the languages of the NobaNoba
Noba is a term found in a number of historical sources discussing ancient and Medieval Nubia. Its exact meaning is uncertain, with ancient sources themselves seeming confused about the region south of Egypt...
nomads who occupied the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
between the First and Third Cataract
Cataracts of the Nile
The cataracts of the Nile are shallow lengths of the Nile between Aswan and Khartoum where the surface of the water is broken by many small boulders and stones protruding out of the river bed, as well as many rocky islets. Aswan is also the Southern boundary of Upper Egypt...
s and the Makorae nomads who occupied the land between the Third and Fourth Cataracts following the collapse of Meroë
Kingdom of Kush
The native name of the Kingdom was likely kaš, recorded in Egyptian as .The name Kash is probably connected to Cush in the Hebrew Bible , son of Ham ....
sometime in the 4th century. The Makorae were a separate tribe who eventually conquered or inherited the lands of the Noba: they established a Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
-influenced state called Makuria
Makuria
The Kingdom of Makuria was a kingdom located in what is today Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. It was one of a group of Nubian kingdoms that emerged during the decline of the Aksumite Empire, which it had been part of from approximately 4BC to AD 950...
which administered the Noba lands separately as the eparchy
Eparchy
Eparchy is an anglicized Greek word , authentically Latinized as eparchia and loosely translating as 'rule over something,' like province, prefecture, or territory, to have the jurisdiction over, it has specific meanings both in politics, history and in the hierarchy of the Eastern Christian...
of Nobadia. Nobadia was converted to Monophysite Christianity by the priests Julian and Longinus, and thereafter received its bishops from the Pope of Alexandria.
Old Nubian is one of the oldest written African languages
Languages of Africa
There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...
but was used only sporadically. The civil administration and legal records tended to employ Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
, while the church leadership (originally all Egyptians) were fluent in Coptic
Coptic language
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
. Over time, more and more Old Nubian began to appear in both secular and religious documents, and the language also influenced the use of Greek and Coptic in the region (eg, some confusion of Greek grammatical genders & use of variant verb tenses). The consecration documents found with the remains of Archbishop Timotheos suggest, however, that Greek and Coptic continued to be used into the late 14th century, by which time Arabic was also in widespread use.
Writing
Old Nubian is written in an uncialUncial
Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters are written in either Greek, Latin, or Gothic.-Development:...
variant of the Coptic alphabet
Coptic alphabet
The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language...
, including three unique letters: /ɲ/ and /w/ are both apparently derived from Meroitic script
Meroitic script
The Meroitic script is an alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë/Kush. It was developed in the Napatan Period , and first appears in the 2nd century BCE. For a time, it was also possibly used to write the Nubian...
; /ŋ/ is thought to be a ligature
Ligature (typography)
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms", where the specific shape of a letter depends on...
of two Greek gamma
Gamma
Gamma is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Gimel . Letters that arose from Gamma include the Roman C and G and the Cyrillic letters Ge Г and Ghe Ґ.-Greek:In Ancient Greek, gamma represented a...
s.
Old Nubian made extensive use of nomina sacra
Nomina sacra
Nomina sacra means "sacred names" in Latin, and can be used to refer to traditions of abbreviated writing of several frequently occurring divine names or titles in early Greek language Holy Scripture...
. Abbreviation was also used more generally throughout the language: in addition to nomina sacra formulas, a line over a letter could indicate:
- a vowelVowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
which formed a syllable by itself, or was preceded by one of ⲗ, ⳟ, ⲣ, or ϫ; - a consonantConsonantIn articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
with an /i/ (sometimes unwritten) preceding it.
The sound /i/ could be written or ; /u/ was normally written ου. In diphthongs, a dieresis was sometimes used over ι to indicate the semivowel
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
y. Geminate consonants were written double; long vowels were usually not distinguished from short ones.
Modern Nobiin is a tonal language: if Old Nubian was as well, the values were not marked.
Punctuation marks included a high dot •, sometimes substituted by a double backslash \\ , used roughly like an English period
Full stop
A full stop is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of sentences. In American English, the term used for this punctuation is period. In the 21st century, it is often also called a dot by young people...
or colon
Colon (punctuation)
The colon is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line.-Usage:A colon informs the reader that what follows the mark proves, explains, or lists elements of what preceded the mark....
, a slash / used like a question mark
Question mark
The question mark , is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages. The question mark is not used for indirect questions...
, and a double slash // sometimes used to separate verses.
Noun
Old Nubian has no genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
, nor any article
Article (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
s. The noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
consists of a stem to which grammatical case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es and postpositions are added; the main ones are:
- -l nominative, marking the subjectSubject (grammar)The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
: eg diabolos-il "the devil (subj.)"; iskit-l "the earth (subj.)". - -n(a) genitive, marking the possessor: eg iart-na palkit-la "into the sea of thoughts".
- -k(a) "directive", marking the direct or indirect object: eg Mikhaili-ka "Michael (obj.), to Michael"
- -lo locative, meaning "at"
- -la inessive, meaning "in(to)"
- -do, meaning "on"
- -dal meaning "with"
The most common plural is in -gu-; eg uru-gu-na "of kings", or gindette-gu-ka "thorns (object
Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
)", becoming -agui- in the predicative. Rarer plurals include -rigu- (eg mug-rigu-ka "dogs (obj.)" (predicative -regui-) and -pigu-.
Pronoun
The basic pronounPronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s are:
- ai- "I"
- ir- "you (singular)"
- tar- "he, she, it"
- er- "we (including you)"
- u- "we (excluding you)"
- ur- "you (plural)"
- ter- "they"
Demonstratives include in- "this", man- "that"; interrogatives include ngai- "who?", min- "what?", islo "where?", iskal "how?".
Verb
The verbVerb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
has five main forms: present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
, two different preterite
Preterite
The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
s, future
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
, and imperative
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
. For each of these, there are subjunctive and indicative forms. It conjugates according to person, eg for doll- "wish" in the present tense:
- dollire "I wish"
- dollina "you (singular) wish", "he, she, it wishes"
- dolliro "we wish", "you (plural) wish"
- dollirana "they wish"
Example text
- ⲕⲧ̅ⲕⲁ ⲅⲉⲗⲅⲟ̅ⲥⲛ ⲓ̈ⲏ̅ⲥⲟⲩⲥⲓ ⲛⲁ⋊αν τρικα• ⲇⲟⲗⲗⲉ ⲡⲟⲗⲅⲁⲣⲁ ⲡⲉⲥⲥⲛⲁ• ⲡⲁⲡⲟ ⲥ̅ⲕⲟⲉⲗⲙ̅ⲙⲉ ⲉⲕ̅ⲕⲁ
- Kitka gelgelosuannon Iisusi manyan trika• dolle polgara pessna• papo iskoelimme ikka.
Literally: "Rock and-when-they-rolled-away Jesus eye pair high raising he-said father I-thank you."
Translated: "And when they rolled away the rock, Jesus, raising his eyes high, said: Father, I thank you."
External links
- Extended details on all the letters of the Old Nubian alphabet, especially the additional ones, can be found in this Unicode proposal by Michael EversonMichael EversonMichael Everson is a linguist, script encoder, typesetter, and font designer. His central area of expertise is with writing systems of the world, specifically in the representation of these systems in formats for computer and digital media...
and Stephen Emmel. - The Basic Languages of Christian Nubia: Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian, and Arabic. Ancient Sudan website.
Other Sources
- Browne, Gerald M. (1982) Griffith's Old Nubian Lectionary. Rome/Barcelona.
- Browne, Gerald M. (1988) Old Nubian Texts from Qasr Ibrim I (with J.M.Plumley), London.
- Browne, Gerald M. (1989) Old Nubian Texts from Qasr Ibrim II. London.
- Browne, Gerald M. (1996) Old Nubian dictionary. Corpus scriptorum Christianorum orientalium, vol. 562. Leuven: Peeters. ISBN 90-6831-787-3.
- Browne, Gerald M. (1997) Old Nubian dictionary - appendices. Leuven: Peeters. ISBN 90-6831-925-6
- Browne, Gerald M. (2002) A grammar of Old Nubian. Munich: LINCOM. ISBN 3-89586-893-0.
- Griffith, F. Ll. (1913) The Nubian Texts of the Christian Period. ADAW 8.
- Zyhlarz, Ernst (1928) Grundzüge der nubischen Grammatik im christlichen Frühmittelalter (Altnubisch): Grammatik, Texte, Kommentar und Glossar. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 18, no. 1. Deutsche Morgenländische GesellschaftDeutsche Morgenländische GesellschaftThe Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft , in English the German Oriental Society, is a scholarly organization dedicated to studies of Asia and the broader Orient....
.