How an extinct African language survived through the adaptation of a foreign alphabet

Cultures · Published 30 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Old Nubian, a language once central to the kingdom of Makuria, offers a rare window into medieval African administration. Written using a modified Coptic script, this extinct tongue preserves centuries of religious and secular life, revealing a sophisticated grammatical structure that continues to intrigue linguists and historians today.

Old Nubian, also known as Old Nobiin, served as a primary language for the kingdom of Makuria from the 8th to the 15th century. It stands as one of the oldest recorded African languages, preserved in over a hundred documents ranging from legal letters to sacred hagiographies. While Koine Greek and Coptic were initially dominant in religious spheres, Old Nubian gradually became the standard for civil and religious governance between the 10th and 11th centuries. By the late 14th century, however, Arabic had gained widespread usage alongside these older traditions.

The writing system used for Old Nubian was a specialized version of the Coptic alphabet, featuring a slanted uncial style derived from the White Monastery in Sohag. To accurately represent the language, scribes incorporated three unique characters—ⳡ, ⳣ, and ⳟ—with the first two originating from the ancient Meroitic script. This inclusion suggests that the writing system was likely established as early as the 6th century, shortly after the Meroitic state dissolved. The script also utilized specific punctuation, such as a high dot for periods and a double slash to denote verse breaks.

Grammatically, Old Nubian is notable for its complex verbal system, which uses various suffixes to express mood, tense, aspect, and pluractionality. Unlike many languages, it lacks gender, instead relying on a nominative-accusative case system to organize core arguments. Scholars have long debated the function of the definite determiner -(ⲓ)ⲗ, though modern analysis suggests it serves as a determiner rather than a case marker. While modern Nobiin is tonal, researchers remain uncertain if Old Nubian shared this trait, as any potential tonal markings were never recorded in the surviving manuscripts.

The legacy of this language persists in modern scholarship and technology. In 2021, designer Hatim-Arbaab Eujayl released Sawarda, a typeface based on the historical manuscripts to support educational materials for modern Nobiin. This effort, combined with extensive dictionary work by scholars like Gerald M. Browne, ensures that the linguistic nuances of this medieval kingdom remain accessible for future study.

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