Meroitic Hieroglyphs Table
| Sign | Unicode name | Transliteration |
|---|---|---|
| ๐ฆ | letter a | a |
| ๐ฆ | letter e | e |
| ๐ฆ | letter i | i |
| ๐ฆ | letter o | o |
| ๐ฆ | letter ya | ya |
| ๐ฆ | letter wa | wa |
| ๐ฆ | letter ba | ba |
| ๐ฆ | letter ba-2 | ba (variant shape) |
| ๐ฆ | letter pa | pa |
| ๐ฆ | letter ma | ma |
| ๐ฆ | letter na | na |
| ๐ฆ | letter na-2 | na (variant shape) |
| ๐ฆ | letter ne | ne |
| ๐ฆ | letter ne-2 | ne (variant shape) |
| ๐ฆ | letter ra | ra |
| ๐ฆ | letter ra-2 | ra (variant shape) |
| ๐ฆ | letter la | la |
| ๐ฆ | letter kha | kha |
| ๐ฆ | letter hha | hha |
| ๐ฆ | letter sa | sa |
| ๐ฆ | letter sa-2 | sa (variant shape) |
| ๐ฆ | letter se | se |
| ๐ฆ | letter ka | ka |
| ๐ฆ | letter qa | qa |
| ๐ฆ | letter ta | ta |
| ๐ฆ | letter ta-2 | ta (variant shape) |
| ๐ฆ | letter te | te |
| ๐ฆ | letter te-2 | te (variant shape) |
| ๐ฆ | letter to | to |
| ๐ฆ | letter da | da |
| ๐ฆ | symbol vidj | symbol vidj |
| ๐ฆ | symbol vidj-2 | symbol vidj-2 |
The Meroitic script consists of two twin alphasyllabaries developed to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Kush at the beginning of the Meroitic Period (3rd century BC): monumental hieroglyphs, derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and a cursive derived from Demotic Egyptian. This chart covers the monumental member - the tomb-wall and temple face of the script - listing all 32 codepoints of Unicode block U+10980: 23 letters (four of them vowels), variant shapes of seven letters, and two symbols. Unlike Egyptian writing, Meroitic spelling was remarkably simple: one-to-one correspondence between the monumental and cursive forms, no multi-valued signs, and a consonant system with inherent a so that the letter transcribed p reads pa by default. Monumental texts run top to bottom in columns going right to left, signs facing the start of the line - an inheritance from the Egyptian hieroglyphic tradition the script deliberately imitated.
The script carries one of decipherment’s strangest double verdicts: it was cracked in 1909 by Francis Llewellyn Griffith, working from the Meroitic spellings of Egyptian names - and yet the Meroitic language itself remains poorly understood. Every sign on this chart has a sound value you can trust; what the words mean, beyond royal names and titles, is largely still open. Scholars debate even the script’s influences (the vowel letters have been read as evidence of Greek contact), and a first complete royal dedication discovered in late 2008 offers future tests for current hypotheses. Unicode encoded the hieroglyphs in version 6.0 (2010), this chart’s verified source; the cursive twin has its own chart on this site.
How to use
- Read the table in block order: the four vowels (a, e, i, o) first, then the consonant rows - each with its Unicode name and the Griffith-school transliteration. The names ending in -2 are variant shapes of the same letter (both appear in the monumental corpus, so both needed codepoints); the two symbol rows close the block. Because Meroitic consonants carry an inherent a, read the row pa as pa, ta as ta - unless the word spells otherwise with the vowel-letter series. That inherent-vowel habit is the alphasyllabic logic you can compare on the Baybayin chart.
- Practice with the safe texts: royal names. Names of Egyptian pharaohs and Kushite rulers written in Meroitic are the very evidence Griffith used - take a transliterated royal name, match it sign by sign against this chart, and the monumental shapes stick. The most famous monumental corpus is at Meroë itself: pyramid chapels and stelae of the Kushite royal cemetery, where this script faces the beginning of the text in right-to-left columns.
- Then keep the honest boundary in view: reading aloud is not understanding. A Meroitic funerary inscription can be transcribed letter-perfect from this chart while its connected prose remains untranslated - only names, titles and a handful of recurring words (water? bread? the word for the deceased?) have stable meanings. That is what makes this chart unusual among the world’s script tables: it is a key that opens the sound of a dead language while its meaning stays behind the door. For the everyday half of the system - the hand that wrote 90% of all surviving texts - continue to the cursive chart, where the same letters grow ligatures, logograms and a full commercial number system.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Meroitic hieroglyphs and Meroitic cursive?
Two graphic forms of the same writing system: monumental hieroglyphs (this chart, block U+10980) for display contexts, and a cursive derived from Demotic Egyptian for everyday writing. There was a simple one-to-one correspondence between the two forms - unlike Egyptian, where sign values multiplied - except that cursive joins consonants to a following i in ligatures. The cursive is by far the more common: about 90% of all Meroitic inscriptions, and it predates the earliest surviving hieroglyphic text by a century or more.
If the script was deciphered, why is the language still unknown?
Because decipherment only recovers sound values, not vocabulary. Griffith showed in 1909 how to read Meroitic signs by matching them to Egyptian names spelled in Meroitic - a phonetic crossword with a known answer key. But Meroitic has no close, well-attested relatives (proposals connect it to Nilo-Saharan languages, none proven), so the words behind the sounds mostly stay opaque. Royal names and titles yield to the Egyptian key; connected prose does not. Meroitic is the classic case of a script we can pronounce but cannot (yet) understand.
Why do some letters have two versions?
The rows whose names end in -2 are variant shapes of a single letter - monumental Meroitic drew ba, na, ne, ra, sa, ta and te in two distinct forms depending on context or workshop, and Unicode encodes both so every inscription can be transcribed exactly. This is different from the cursive chart, where the extra row is an archaic form of sa. Treat a -2 sign as the same letter as its base: the transliteration is identical.
What did Meroitic hieroglyphs write about?
The monumental corpus is royal and religious: pyramid chapels, offering tables and stelae at Meroë’s royal cemetery, dedication texts, and inscriptions naming Kushite rulers and Egyptian deities alike. Because the language resists translation, the reliably readable content is onomastic - kings’ and queens’ names, divine names, titles. A first complete royal dedication found in late 2008 may help confirm or refute current hypotheses about the language, which is exactly the kind of discovery this script still waits for.
Is Meroitic related to ancient Egyptian?
The scripts are; the languages are not known to be. The Meroitic writing system was built on Egyptian models - the hieroglyphs derive from Egyptian hieroglyphs, the cursive from Demotic, and the direction and facing of monumental signs copy Egyptian habits. But Meroitic the language is not a form of Egyptian; it is the language of Kush, and its classification (various Nilo-Saharan proposals) remains open. The script is a borrowed suit of clothes on an unclassified body - which is why reading it aloud and understanding it are two different problems.