posted
Does anyone have any hard data on PRE-ISLAMIC SCRIPTS? If in the database somewhere can you repost? Not looking so much for anything on the OLMECS, Dravidians etc. These are not African. Looking to stay strictly within Africa. Looking for evidence on PRE-ISLAMIC scripts in West Africa. And were such scripts part of indigenous movement in the Saharan belt that extended into West Africa- after all the Sahara is a "Pan African" entity. If you have it please post full citations.
So far I have one reference: Hau, K. (1973). "Pre-Islamic writing in West Africa", Bulletin de l'IFAN , series B, no1 .
But what is the breakdown? Does anyone have this paper? What does it say?
Again looking to stay focused on West Africa, PRE-ISLAMIC
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posted
Nsibidi is the only pre-Islamic script I know of in western Africa. I believe also there was a script in Senegal called Gerze. A couple references I read about Central Africa around the modern day Congo region stated the people there would write on animal skins and this was documented by early Portuguese explorers.
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Hmm, interesting. Any references where the above can be explored a bit more? In digging, so far I have read that the Mande scripts were probably the invention of mobile blacksmiths or magical specialists who inscribed them on amulets, for a variety of spiritual or religious purposes. But info so far found is thin. I'll give the reference for others to see what they can dig up and add. Where is Nsibidi found?
Patrick R. McNaughton (1993). The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in West Africa
Fragmentary references to Hau elsewhere: ---------- Hau, K. (1973). "Pre-Islamic writing in West Africa", Bulletin de l'IFAN , series B, no1
also mention the role of the blacksmiths.
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
We, in West Africa, never developed writing on the scale of open common use in recording annals or philosophy or even personal letters so don't know if the below fits your topic or not.
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The Guy Werugën was used during coronation ceremonies to measure the height of the new damel. Its trunk still caries numerous incised marks consisting of vertical and oblique strokes and aligned dots. The use of baobab trunks to support arcane inscriptions is common throughout Senegambia. Such trees are known generically in Wolof as guy mbind(baobab of writing) and are discussed below.
Another great baobab in Mboul whose trunk is incised with horizontal strokes is the Guy Sanar Akanan, or “idol baobab,” which was used by traditional priests. When she showed it to us, the wife of the Chef de village kept well away from this tree, and so did we. Another of Diourbel’s ancient baobabs, the Guy Kodiouf of Ndounka ward, was the object of a scholarly controversy between the great Senegalese intellectual Cheikh Anta Diop and Raymond Mauny, a well-known Africanist prehistorian. In the second volume of Nations nègres et culture (1954, p. 352) Diop recounts childhood memories of what he called hieroglyphs (signs of hands and feet, of animal feet and other objects) inscribed into the bark of this tree. Mauny then went to visit this baobab and concluded that the marks were merely graffiti, and not actually glyphs (Notes africaines #89, 1961, p. 11). After returning to the site Diop responded that, though the signs he could make out (a camel, prayer beads, a sword, a goat hide) were not as he had remembered them, the glyphs inscribed on its trunk might be deciphered and thus this tree and others like it constitute important archaeological artifacts. (Antériorité des civilizations nègres, 1967, p. 246).
[...]
In the old kingdoms, nobles, priests and griots all used to inscribe certain baobabs with religious or political markings in what may well have been secret scripts known only to initiates. As we have seen above, such guy mbind (baobabs of writing) feature in every important historic settlement. But, to the best of my knowledge, half a century after the Diop-Mauny debate no study of these trees and of the messages inscribed on their trunks has yet been undertaken. Though the secrets of these trees are now lost, and the priests and the nobles of olden days are now gone, local people still treat these trees with great respect. No harm is allowed to come to them and their stories are still told.
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Above snippets courtesy of ERIC ROSSPosts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011
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posted
Hau, K. (1973). "Pre-Islamic writing in West Africa", Bulletin de l'IFAN , series B, no1 . is a good article but my paper Winters,Clyde Ahmad, "The influence of the Mande scripts on ancient American Writing systems", Bulletin l'de IFAN, T39, serie b, no2, (1977), pages 941-967 provides numerous citations on African writing systems. The ancient writing systems of West Africa are based on Thinite writing. Its best example in West Africa is the Vai Writing system. I use the Vai script to decipher the ancient Inscriptions from the Sahara. The Saharan inscriptions are found from the Fezzan to Dar Tichitt in Mauretania. There are many inscriptions written in this script spreading from the Fezzan to the ancient Mande cities of Tichitt There are many inscriptions written in this script spreading from the Fezzan to the ancient Mande cities of Tichitt.The Tichitt dwellings were built by Mande speaking people and date back to 2000-800 BC. Researchers claim that the inscriptions are along the chariot routes and other sites in Dar Tichitt.. This suggest that some of the inscriptions may date back to 1500-2000BC, this is the date for the appearance of the horse in the Sahara.
The writing found among the Vai and along the Chariots routes leading to Tichitt is related to the Mande, Saharan and Libyco-Berber writing. Many of these inscriptions like the inscription at Oued Mertoutek date back to Olmec times.
This script was used to model the numerous writings in West Africa including Berber scripts, and the many Mande scripts.
The Vai signs resemble Tifinigh does not mean the writing is Berber.
Delafosse early recognized the writing systems share similar signs but Vai is syllabic.
See: Nicole Lambert, Medinet Sbat et la Protohistoire de Mauritanie Occidentale, Antiquites Africaines, 4(1970),pp.15-62;
Nicole Lambert, L'apparition du cuivre dans les civilisations prehistoriques. In C.H. Perrot et al Le Sol, la Parole et 'Ecrit (Paris: Societe Francaise d'Histoire d'Outre Mer) pp.213-226;
R. Mauny, Tableau Geographique de l'Ouest Afrique Noire. Histoire et Archeologie (Fayard);
R.A. Kea, Expansion and Contractions: World-Historical Change and the Western Sudan World-System (1200/1000BC-1200/1250A.D.) Journal of World-Systems Reserach, 3(2004), pp.723-816 ).
The ancient writing systems of West Africa are based on Thinite writing. Its best example in West Africa is the Vai Writing system. Delafosse 1899 (pp. 308-309)
Delafosse 1899 (pp. 310-311)
Delafosse 1899 (pp. 312-13)
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The Vai characters agree with the Thinite symbols.
Antiquity of the oued mertoutek Inscription
Controversy surrounds my dating of the Mande/ Libyco-Berber
/Ancient Libyan inscription found at Oued Mertoutek by Wulsin
(1940). I have proposed a 2nd millennium date for this document
while Wulsin dates the inscription to the 5th century of the
Christian era.
At Oued Mertoutek Wulsin found an engraving of an ovicaprid (sheep/goat) with an ancient Libyco-Berber inscription placed inside the figure.
Although the patina for the inscription and the goat/sheep figure were the same , Wulsin claimed that the goat/sheep figure dated to the 1st-3rd millennium BC, and the writing dated back to the horse period of the "Saharan Rock Art" which he assumed was 500-600 AD.
The separate dates for the Oued Mertoutek engraving are clearly inconsistent, given the identical patina of the figure and the writing. There is no way the figure and inscription could be separated by 1500-2500 years and still show identical patina.
Reason, dictates summary rejection of Wulsin's hypothesis supporting the late introduction of writing to the Sahara.
Wuslin based his dating of the Libyco-Berber writing on the Oued Mertoutek engraving on the Hamitic paradigm. This paradigm maintains that writing, the horse and other cultural features were given to Africans by Semitic speaking culturally superior people from the East. In Wulsin's day, researchers believed that the horse arrived in North Africa and the Sahara around 500 AD.
If we accept the discredited Hamitic hypothesis for the introduction of writing to the Sahara, we would have to push the day for the introduction of writing back 800-1400 years. Because 1) the chariot period which is associated with Libyco-Berber writing is believed to have begun in the 2nd millennium BC; and 2) archaeological and epigraphic evidence suggest that writing existed in the Sahara by at least 800 BC.
Close (1980) and Galand have reported that an inscribed pottery vessel with Libyco-Berber inscriptions was found at Tiddis, which dates back to 300 BC. This is 800 years earlier than Wulsin's date for the Oued Mertoutek inscriptions.
In addition, Close (1980)claims that other evidence indicates that Libyco-Berber inscriptions can be pushed back to between 600-700 BC. This archaeological evidence clearly contradict Wulsin's estimation of the Oued Mertoutek inscription's age.
Other evidence for the antiquity of the Oued Mertoutek inscription comes from there association with Saharan chariots.
The inscriptions and chariots share the same patina. These chariots have been dated to around 1200 BC according to Desanges (1981, p.433).
Originally, researchers believed that the Saharan chariots were introduced into the Sahara by Egyptians and/or the Peoples of the Sea. This hypothesis is now discredited because there are few similarities between the Saharan and Aegean portrayals of Chariots (Desanges, 1981,p.432).
In addition, whereas the Horse Period was considered to be 500-600 AD in Wulsin's day, today the horse period is dated between 1500-500 BC (Sahnouni,1996, p.29). The horse depicted in the Sahara was not the Arabian horse typified by the Berber and Taurag horsemen. Barbary horses drew the Saharan chariots horses (Desanges, 1981, p.432). This horse is smaller than the Arabian horses which were not introduced into Africa until the Christian era. The lack of similarity between the Saharan, and eastern chariots, and the horses that drew them indicate the unique nature of Saharan civilization.
The archaeological evidence makes it clear that Wulsin (1940, p.129) made a mistake in his dating of the Oued Mertoutek inscription. The fact that the contemporary epigraphers date the Libyco-Berber inscriptions back to 700 BC and those associated with the Saharan chariots date to 1500 BC, support my contention that the Oued Mertoutek inscriptions date to the 2nd millennium, just like the goat/sheep figure which shares the same patina as the writing according to Wulsin (1940, p.128)himself.
Some researchers refuse to date the Libyco-Berber inscriptions earlier than 700 BC, because the Semitic alphabet was not used until around 800 BC. They claim that Libyco-Berber can not be any older than 800 BC because the Semitic alphabet is suppose to be the parent of the Libyco-Berber writing.
This is a false analogy. Firstly, this view has to be rejected because the Libyco-Berber script includes many signs which are different from Semitic scripts. Although these signs are not found in the Berber alphabet, they are found in the Indus Valley, Linear A and Egyptian pottery signs.
J.T. Cornelius (1954, 1956-1957) illustrated how the Libyco-Berber signs are identical to the Egyptian, South Indian and Linear A writing. Moreover, a cursory comparison of the Thinite postmarks from Upper and Lower Egypt compare favorably to the Libyco-Berber signs ( Petrie, 1900; van de Brink, 1992). All of these writing systems date to the 3rd millennium BC.
Secondly, these writing systems correlate well with Wulsin's dating of the goat/sheep figure at Oued Mertoutek. This congruency supports a 3rd millennium date for the Oued Mertoutek inscriptions, and explains the fact that both the goat/sheep and Libyco-Berber inscriptions share the same patina.
In conclusion, the Oued Mertoutek inscription probably dates back to the 3rd Millennium BC. Two factors dispute Wulsin's dating of the Oued Mertoutek inscription: 1) the archaeological evidence which has pushed back the dating of Libyco-Berber inscriptions to between 300-700 BC; and 2) the dating of the Horse Period in Saharan history to 1500 BC, rather than 500-600 AD.
The dating of the Horse period in the Sahara is now pushed back to 1500 BC. This factor alone disconfirms the hypothesis of Wulsin, that the Oued Mertoutek inscription was written around 500-600 AD, because Wulsin had formed this conclusion based on the dating of the Horse Period of Saharan Rock Art. Changes in the dating of the Horse Period from those accepted by Wulsin 50 years ago automatically changes our dating of the Oued Mertoutek inscription.
The ancient origin of Libyco-Berber writing is further confirmed by the common symbols shared by the Oued Mertoutek inscriptions, and contemporary 3rd Millennium writing systems in Mesopotamia, Crete, Egypt and the Indus Valley. This along with the same patina for the goat/sheep figure and Oued Mertoutek inscription is congruent with the determination that the Oued Mertoutek inscription is 5000 years old.
Based on the Patina of of the Oued Mertoutek monument I can give it an early date.
Below is a Saharan inscription with the bar and dot pattern.
The fact that the Vai script has dot and bar signs make it clear that ancient African writing systems did have dot and bar symbols.
References
Close, A.E. (1980). Current research and recent radiocarbon dates from northern Africa", , 21,pp.145-167.
Cornelius, J.T. (1954). The Dravidian Question, Culture>, 3 (2), pp.92-102.
Cornelius, J.T. (1956-1957). Are Dravidian Dynastic Egyptians?, India, 1956-1957, pp.89-117.
Desanges, J. (1981). The Proto-Berbers. In of Africa II> (Ed.) by G.M. Mokhtar (pp.423-440). Berkeley,CA: UNESCO.
Sahnouni,M. (1996). Saharan rock art. In ,(Ed.) by Theodore Celenko (pp.28-30). Bloomington,IN:Indianapolis , Museum of Art.
van den Brink, E.C.M.(1992). Corpus and numerical evaluation of the Thinite potmarks. In Dedicated to Michael Allen Hoffman> (pp.265-296). Oxbow Books. Park End Place, Oxford: Egyptian Studies Association Publication. No.2.
Wulsin,F.R. (1940). Northwest Africa>. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Vol.19 (1).
posted
Thanks Tukler, never heard of the babab inscriptions- will check it out. Per Ausar the Nsibidi may be an ancient system with broader elements than what Diop wrote about. Looking into it now.
Thanks too Clyde. I'll check those resources out as well. PS: so you are linking the Vai script with an ancient Nile Valley script-the Thinnite? How far back does Vai or Nsibidi go?
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posted
Not sure if this post will be useful but I have a few suggestions. When researching African scripts you will often discover that knowledge in these societies are kept secret from the common population. When foreign anthropologists interviewed people its hard to sometimes discern exactly what types of information they pass on to the researcher. Most books on Africa not relating to ancient Egypt tend to be obscure and confined to academic libraries. So if you live in a university town and they allow you to access then take advantage. Electronic resources like Jstor might also help you in your search.
I complied lots of information from research but due to lack of computer skills and transient lifestyle most of it was lost. So research on Africa as a whole needs a active website that complies information and gets active viewership. Most African research websites are lacking in terms of scholarship and design and honestly most are eye sores.
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
True.
This secretiveness is why Africa came to take a back seat in world development in technologies while others, in time, have progressed.
Ausar your biblio is still on waAfrika.
Posts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011
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posted
I miss those days on forums like Ta-seti and Wa Afrika when I was passionate about ancient Egypt and African. That passion is not as strong as it once was. Its sad there is little interest in this subject. Still, I think this subject deserves attention and better presentation than I have the ability to do.
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Hmm, you may have a point. But isnt secrecy in writing part of what happened on different continents- at least initially- "the sacred signs" of the priests and so on?
Check out the data below. Got it from a book screenshot and typing to convert it to text for the general data-pool.
Could it be said that pre-colonial nsibidi writing was a West African move to break away from the secrecy you suggest? Nsibidi was used for administration and info with some literary content. Though initially held close by the sacred societies could this wide usage have represented an expansion trend, or wider access pattern? Nsibidi symbols also represented some sounds, moving it beyond a strict pictographic arrangement. It was apparently keyed to the Efik, Ekoi, Igbo languages- hence the Encyc editor sees it as a more elaborate writing system like others on the continent. Like others as well, it also does not need any Muslim influence.
What's you take Ausar and Tukler? --------------------------------------------------------------
QUOTE: "However, such systems are also found in areas where Muslim influence has been less strong or is unlikely. Thus, among the Ashanti and other Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana and Cote D'Ivorie, where gold was of great political, economic and symbolic significance, many goldweights bore signs that indicated their precise ponderal value; other signs corresponded to proverbs, while others represented concepts (for example, certain aspects of the Supreme Being). The nsibidi system of the Ekoi, Igbo and Ibibio peoples of the Cross River area of present-day Nigeria used over a thousand signs to represent a considerable number of concepts as well as some sounds. Nsibidi was used to record court cases and convey complex messages, including warnings in wartime, and for summarizing folktales and personal narratives; its pictograms thus constituted a true writing system. As with the Malian systems of graphic signs, knowledge of nsibidi was often acquired within the initiation societies, but unlike the Malian ones, nsibidi signs were often tattooed on the body or dramatically enacted through gestures." --Kevin Shllingford (2004) "Literacy and Indigenous Scripts: Pre-colonial West Africa" - Encyclopedia of African History
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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All the information I read from various sources indicate that Nsibidi was used amongst the elite and initiated groups. Just about every ethnic group in western Africa has a secret society from which information is passed from generation to generation. When I look at Western African I tend to look at each culture distinct but sharing some cultural affinities with each other. Overall, each group is their own nation with unique customs and traditions.
I donot have the article but a Virginia news papers documented Nsibidi writing on grave stones. I wish I had the article but its someone online. Somewhere at a university there is probably lots of research about it.
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Wiki has article on nisbidi but like you suggest people should do independent confirmation with published papers etc.
Per article below, nisbidi writing is found on ancient ceramics -ceramic stools and headrests from the Calabar region, dating between 400 and 1400 CE .
Slogar, Christopher (Spring 2007). "Early ceramics from Calabar, Nigeria: Towards a history of Nsibidi.". African Arts (University of California) 40 (1): 18–29.
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
I'm sorry I don't have a take Zarahan.
It would be nice to have pre-Islamic written documents in West Africa and if there were surely we'd've known about them by now.
I know of post-Islamic writings in various indigenous scripts and I thank you for what you've shared on Nsibidi with its possible 400 CE age.
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