Writing, History of, in Africa

By: Konrad Tuchscherer

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Writing, History of, in Africa

Africa’s contribution to the art and science of writing has gone largely unacknowledged or underappreciated in the annals of history. The common myth and prejudice against Africa as a historically illiterate continent ignores the many long, rich, and diverse traditions of writing which have existed on the continent from ancient times to the present. Indeed, the earliest extant evidence of phonetic writing anywhere in the world is to be found on the African continent, birthplace of the Egyptian system.

Cradle of Writing

Hieroglyphs emerged in the fourth millennium B.C., their origin attributed by early Egyptian scribes to a god, Toth. The phonetic nature of the hieroglyphic script was likely achieved via the rebus principle, in which a symbol associated with a word (logogram), for example ⋆/ “sun,” was applied to a lexically unrelated word or constituent of a word which sounds the same (homophone), such as “son.” Following the hieroglyphic script were two adapted cursive scripts called Heratic and Demotic. The successive stages and development of the Egyptian system of writing spanned nearly 4,000 years. Despite the fact that the Egyptian system is one of the longest literary traditions ever to exist, the ability to read hieroglyphs—and therefore know the story of ancient Egypt—was lost for almost 1,400 years. In 1799, however, Napoleon Bonaparte’s army discovered a large basalt slab near Rosetta in the Nile Delta. This slab, famously known today as the Rosetta Stone, enabled decipherment as it was inscribed in three scripts which provided a key: hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek. Despite the fact that the British seized the Rosetta Stone from the French in 1802 (the Rosetta Stone remains a central attraction in the British Museum today), it was a Frenchman, Jean-François Champollion, who achieved the first significant decipherment of hieroglyphs from a copy of the stone. Historians have traditionally asserted that the world’s earliest phonetic script tradition was cuneiform, born at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia. Here Sumerians incised pictographs for commodities and numerals into clay tablets. It was believed that around 3100 B.C. the idea of writing diffused south to ancient Egypt. Over the course of the last twenty years, however, research in Egypt has uncovered the world’s earliest extant specimens of writing some 500 miles south of the Nile Delta. In 1988, archaeologists involved in the excavation of a palace tomb, at Umm el-Qa’ab cemetery at Abydos, discovered 150 small labels written in hieroglyphs and carved into ivory or bone. These and other finds have been dated to about 3300 B.C.—the earliest extant evidence for phonetic writing anywhere in the world. Recent estimates for the emergence of writing in Egypt have been dated as early as 3500 B.C.

Early Scripts from Africa

The Egyptian system of writing inspired many of our modern scripts, such as Hebrew and Arabic, and indirectly scripts such as Greek, Roman, and Cyrillic. Not surprisingly, many of these subsequent scripts—which evolved outside of Africa—later returned to Africa. The earliest was the Phoenician consonantal alphabet, which arrived in Africa with the establishment of the colony of Carthage on the coast of modern Tunisia. By the ninth century B.C., the alphabet took on a distinctly African flavor known as Punic and spread throughout northern Africa as well as to Spain, Italy, and France. This script, in turn, inspired the script known as Neo-Punic, which emerged following the fall of Carthage. Although Punic did not survive in Africa beyond the second century A.D., it inspired a handful of scripts for writing the Berber languages of North and Saharan Africa (some of which have not been entirely deciphered), the most legendary being the Tifinagh script. This consonantal alphabet has survived in Africa for over 2,000 years, used by the Tuareg people for writing the Tamasheq language, largely in the form of inscriptions on rocks from Algeria and Morocco and through the Sahara to Mali and Niger. Two other important scripts to arrive in Africa were the Aramaic and Sabaic (also Sabaean) alphabets, both as early as the sixth century B.C. Aramaic, derived from Phoenician, arrived in Egypt with Persian occupation. Outside of Africa, the Aramaic alphabet inspired the creation of the Hebrew square alphabet, which would be employed by North African Jews. Some of the oldest extant documents in Africa are written in Hebrew. The Sabaic alphabet, originating from the Arabian Peninsula, was carried by settlers to ancient Ethiopia (or Abyssinia, in the region of present-day Eritrea). Here it would be transformed by Christian Ethiopians into an Ethiopian (or Ethiopic) syllabary in the fourth century A.D.. The Ethiopian script was used to write the language Ge’ez (from the South Arabic for “emigrant”). After the death of Ge’ez as a spoken language in the fifteenth century—and after its continued use as a liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church—the script was adapted to write Amharic and other Ethiopian languages. The Ethiopian syllabary, along with the Tifinagh consonantal alphabet noted earlier, are the two longest surviving script innovations born in Africa—both remaining in continuous usage for about 2,000 years. The Greek alphabet arrived in Egypt with the founding of Alexandria in 322 B.C. and, along with traces of influence from the Egyptian Demotic script (the last stone inscription A.D. 452), inspired the creation of the Coptic alphabet, which emerged in the second century A.D. for writing Egyptian and Christian literature. Coptic fell into gradual disuse beginning about A.D. 800, a result of the penetration into the region of Islam and the Arabic script. By the fourteenth century, Coptic survived solely as a liturgical language of the Egyptian Coptic Church. The influence of the Coptic alphabet, however, extended south to northern Sudan, where it inspired the creation of the Nubian alphabet of Christian Nubia. This script was used beginning in the eighth century A.D., but fell into decline when Nubia was besieged in the thirteenth century by the Muslim Mamluks. Prior to the emergence of the Nubian alphabet, another script emerged in Sudan. This was the Meroïtic script of the Nile Valley, used for only a short time, from about 180 B.C. to the fourth century A.D., until Meroë fell to Aksum. Like the Egyptian system that inspired it, the Meroïtic script had both hieroglyphic and cursive styles.

Arabic and Roman Scripts

From a contemporary perspective, two of the most important scripts to diffuse throughout Africa were the Arabic and Roman alphabets. The Arabic alphabet (a consonantal alphabet), originated in the fifth century, and arrived in Africa—first in Egypt—with the arrival of Islam in the first part of the seventh century. The script spread throughout North Africa via trade and proselytization, and diffused through the Sahara Desert and to the West and East African coasts. The earliest Arabic script inscription in West Africa has been dated to 1013–1014 , the earliest for East Africa 1104–1105 . The Arabic script has a number of variants and calligraphy styles associated with it, including Kūfīc (book), Naskhī (cursive), and Maghribī (Western Islamic). Variant forms of the Arabic script, in many environments referred to as Ajami (from Ar., “non-Arabic”), have been used for centuries for writing African languages. There exists a substantial amount of literature employing Ajami for transcribing African languages such as Swahili, Hausa, Fula, and many related Manding languages. The Roman script arrived first in Africa when the Romans conquered Carthage in the second century B.C.. The spread of Islam and the Arabic script led to the decline of the alphabet by the eleventh century. The Roman script, however, reemerged in western Africa with Portuguese arrivals via the coast in the fifteenth century. Through contacts with these Portuguese and subsequently other Europeans along coastal regions of Africa, Africans gained literacy skills that they applied not only to European languages and variant pidgin forms of those spoken languages, but to their own languages as well. For many Africans who had previously not been in contact with literate traditions, the idea of writing had an enormous impact on them and inspired them to learn foreign scripts and to experiment with creating new scripts of their own. There exist a number of examples of prominent Africans—kings, sultans, chiefs, and other leaders—who through the course of history have attempted to invent original scripts for their languages. One such example was King Agaja of Dahomey who, in 1724, inspired by the literacy skills of an Englishman who he had made his slave, is alleged to have experimented at inventing his own script. There is no evidence to suggest that Agaja’s script ever gained any currency among his people, but other scripts successfully emerged in the two centuries after Agaja, many of which have been sustained to this day. Most famous of these is the Vai syllabary of Liberia.

African Invented Scripts

It has fallen to my lot to make a discovery of such importance to the civilization of Africa, that I am anxious my own profession should bear the honour it may deserve. The discovery consists of a written language of the Phonetic order.

Thus began the dramatic January 1849 report of the “discovery” of the Vai script by Lieutenant Frederick E. Forbes, Commander of the British naval squadron engaged in an anti-slave trade patrol along the western coast of Africa. While landed at Cape Mount, in the Vai country of what is present-day Liberia, his curiosity was aroused by characters written on the house of a Liberian settler. He learned about the phonetic/syllabic nature of the Vai script and subsequently conducted a short study of the language and script while anchored in the waters off Cape Mount. After receiving confirmation of the novelty of his information from such authorities as President Joseph J. Roberts of Liberia and the Reverend Edward Jones, Principal of the Fourah Bay Institution in Freetown, Forbes communicated his news to Europe. The Vai syllabary is the earliest known phonetic script tradition to emerge and sustain itself in sub-Saharan Africa. The script was devised in 1832 or 1833 in Dsondu/Jondu, in Cape Mount, Liberia. The primary individual associated with its creation was Momolu Duwalu Bukele, who was assisted by five friends. Bukele maintained that he received his inspiration to invent the script in a dream in which he was met by a tall venerable looking white man who taught him to write syllabic Vai characters in the sand. Apart from being the earliest phonetic script born in sub-Saharan Africa, the Vai script has the distinction of being the script that has the longest record of continuous usage. The script remains popular among the Vai today, used by about 20 percent of Vai men for purposes of record keeping, correspondence, translations from the Qur’an and Bible, public announcements, and for the creation of original texts. The script remains an important expression of Vai identity. In its modern form, the syllabary contains up to 212 characters and is written from left to right. Momolu Duwalu Bukele is regarded by many as the “inventor” of the Vai script. Those Vai men who assisted him in devising characters might also be regarded as inventors. The enterprise of inventing the script and creating a novel set of characters to fill it out, and then introducing it to the Vai community at large, must be attributed to Bukele and his associates. But the general history of inventions unmistakably demonstrates that both an invention itself and its historical “take-up” depend on appropriate historical circumstances. In the early nineteenth century the Vai were under cultural pressure from several different directions, and by the 1820s were in contact with four literate groups: European traders with their accounts, Islamic teachers with their Qur’an, Christian missionaries with their Bible, and literate Liberian colonists. The last two elements were the most recent arrivals and their combined influence was probably the reason why the decisive moment for the construction and social success of a Vai script occurred when it did. Thus, the emergence of the Vai script illustrates a balance between “independent invention” and “stimulus diffusion.” In recent years compelling evidence has emerged suggesting that the organizational design for the Vai syllabary was not suggested by either the Roman alphabet or the Arabic consonantal alphabet, but rather another syllabary: the Cherokee syllabary of North America (invented ca. 1821). The decade of the invention of the Vai syllabary was marked by American missionary experimentation in Liberia with the Cherokee syllabary as a model for writing Liberian languages. It may also be important that one of the leading men in Vai country at the time of the invention of the Vai script was a Cherokee. This man, Austin Curtis, had emigrated to Liberia after the spread of the Cherokee syllabary and settled in Vai country four years before the invention of the Vai syllabary. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the famous inscription on a house at Cape Mount noticed by British naval officer Lieutenant F.E. Forbes, which led to international attention for the Vai script, was written on the house of Austin Curtis, a Cherokee. In the immediate vicinity of the Vai, four subsequent script traditions emerged in the first part of the twentieth century among neighboring peoples: the Mende, Kpelle, Loma, and Bassa of Liberia. The stimulus for these scripts was the Vai script. The Mende syllabary, which script practitioners call Kikakui (after its first three characters), was devised in southern Sierra Leone around 1917 by Mohamed Turay, a celebrated Islamic scholar from Maka, Barri chiefdom (close to the Liberian border). A second stage in the development of the script probably occurred under the direction of Kisimi Kamara, an important Chiefdom Speaker (Ndolo Lavale) from Barri chiefdom, also the key figure involved in propagating the script. Turay was Kamara’s great maternal uncle, his Qur’anic teacher, and later his father-in-law. Turay and Kamara were Mende, but with strong Konyaka (Manding) roots. While Turay and Kamara filled out the script with a novel set of characters, many of which were based on an indigenous corpus of Mende graphic imagery, the Vai influence is instantly recognizable in the syllabic organization of Kikakui. The script contains roughly 195 characters and is written from right to left. It is still employed today for purposes of correspondence, record keeping, creating court documents, and in the writing of Islamic and Christian texts. Two other syllabaries were devised in the Liberia-Sierra Leone region in the first part of the twentieth century. The Kpelle and Loma are, like the Vai and Mende, related Mande peoples and both operate syllabaries similar to Vai—providing strong internal evidence that the Vai script provided the syllabic blueprint for their writing systems. The Kpelle syllabary, with eighty-eight characters and written from left to right, was invented in the early 1930s by Chief Gbili of Sanoyea, Liberia. It continues to be used today by a small number of script literates for correspondence and record keeping. The Loma syllabary, which contains at least 185 characters and is written from left to right, was created in the late 1930s by Wido Zobo of Boneketa, Liberia, who was assisted in his task by an associate named Moriba. The Loma script continues to be used in Liberia and Guinea—where the language and script are called Toma—for record keeping and correspondence. The final script of the Liberia-Sierra Leone region devised in the first part of the twentieth century occurred among the Bassa. The Bassa are not a Mande people and their script differs from the others in that it is an alphabet. The Bassa alphabet, called Vah by script practitioners, was invented by Thomas N. Lewis, a Bassa man who arrived in the United States about 1892 and studied at Lincoln and Syracuse Universities. Lewis first thought to create a script for Bassa while working in Plainfield, New Jersey, around 1895. He perfected his system several years later, had print types designed, and printed Christian religious texts in the script. He returned to Liberia in 1907 and his script was earnestly taken up by many Bassa. The Bassa script is written from left to right and contains thirty characters and five tonal diacritics. Although he designed an alphabet for Bassa, Lewis was probably stimulated to design a script for Bassa by the Vai script. He had been educated in Vai country, at the Episcopal Mission School at Cape Mount, and it was likely that here he was inspired to create an original script for Bassa, having been exposed to the Vai script at an early age. The two final scripts discussed here are the Bamum and Bagam scripts, both syllabaries, which emerged in the early twentieth century in the Cameroon Grassfield, over 2,000 miles away from Cape Mount, Liberia (Vai country). The standard history of the Bamum script relates that Sultan Ibrahim Njoya created a pictographic script for writing Bamum as early as 1896. After a series of developments, the script was transformed into a syllabary as late as 1903. In its most widely employed form, known as A-ka-u-ku (after its first four characters) it contained about eighty syllabic characters and the direction of writing was from left to right. Certain accounts of the origin of the script stress a dream episode which inspired Sultan Njoya, other explanations point to Njoya’s admiration for literate traditions of Muslim Hausa and Fulani with whom the Bamum were in contact. Printed accounts of the origin of the Bamum script have tended to undervalue the central role played in the invention by one of Sultan Njoya’s chief notables, Nji Mama. Today the Bamum script continues to be used, albeit largely for ceremonial purposes and as an expression of Bamum cultural identity and pride, with very few script practitioners still living. Also in the Grassfield, a syllabary emerged among the Bagam people around 1910. The script, which contained some seventy characters, and was written from left to right, fell into disuse by the 1950s. During its short period of use it was used for creating records such as farming calendars. The Bagam oral tradition contends that the Bagam king, Pufong, and his royal retainer, Nde Temfong, independently dreamed the same dream in which they were called to create a script for the Bagam. While the Bagam people stress the independent nature of their script, the chronologies of the inventions of the Bamum and Bagam scripts, along with the fact that both scripts are organized as syllabaries, strongly suggests an influence flowing from Bamum to Bagam. The area of the Cameroon Grassfield is over 2,000 miles away from Vailand, situated in Cape Mount, Liberia. The allegedly independent invention of a syllabary among the Bamum has long proved an enigma for scholars. Around the turn of the century, the Bamum were in contact with two literate traditions, the Roman alphabet and the Arabic consonantal alphabet. While contact with such literate traditions might explain the desire for writing, neither served as a model for the Bamum syllabary. Not surprisingly, mounting evidence is pointing to influence from the Vai, who at the end of the nineteenth century traveled in great numbers to Cameroon where they were employed in the Grassfield by the Germans as carriers, soldiers, envoys, and negotiators. Indeed, Vai influence in the Grassfield was so important that German treaties were translated into Vai. Not surprisingly, the period around the turn of the century might be regarded as the heyday of Vai script literacy—a period in which Vai traveling to Cameroon certainly carried their syllabic Vai script with them.

Other Scripts, Orthographies, and Graphic Systems

This entry has attempted to provide a brief introduction to the history of scripts in Africa. Two scripts which were not discussed here, but would have fit into the theme of the discussion, are the N’ko Alphabet (1949) and the Wolof Alphabet (1961). On the other hand, it has been impossible to deal here with the many scripts invented in Africa in the twentieth century (especially second half) which were never (or not yet) adopted by society. For such scripts, there is no evidence available to confirm their past or current usage apart from that of their inventors. The scripts include: Aladura Holy Alphabet (1927), Oberi-Okaime Alphabet (ca. 1930), Bamana Syllabary (1930s), Bete Syllabary (1956), Oromo Syllabo-Alphabet (1956), Fula Alphabet of Oumar Dembélé (from ca. 1958), Fula Alphabet of Adama Ba (from ca. 1963), Kru Alphabet (1972), Nwagu Aneke Igbo Syllabary (ca. early 1960s), Aka Umuagbara Igbo Logo-Syllabary (1993), and Esan Oracle Rainbow Syllabary (ca. 1996). In this essay I featured only a single modern African script (Bagam) that gained some currency before falling into extinction—Bagam was included because it is connected to the relevant Bamum script discussion. The Osmaniya Alphabet (1922) and Somali Alphabet (1933) were left off because these scripts are no longer actively employed. Likewise, it has not been possible to deal here with orthographic scripts introduced in Africa, most of which were based in part on the Roman script. Such scripts include (among many candidates) the Bassa Syllabary (1836), the Yoruba Alphabet (1846), and the Africa Alphabet (also “Westermann script”) introduced by the International Institute for African Languages and Cultures in 1927. Finally, the entry was meant to deal specifically with phonetic script traditions as opposed to non-phonetic systems of graphic symbolism that record and communicate information. These systems include the likes of rock art, Nsibidi symbols, Akan symbols, Bogolanfini symbols, Rhonko symbols, Poro symbols, Cenda symbols, Dogon Cosmograms, Kongo Cosmograms, among many other possible examples.

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