Old Nubian (also called Middle Nubian or Old Nobiin) is an extinct Nubian language, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and closely related to Dongolawi and Kenzi. It was used throughout the kingdom of Makuria, including the eparchy of Nobatia. The language is preserved in more than a hundred pages of documents and inscriptions, both of a religious nature (homilies, prayers, hagiographies, psalms, lectionaries), and related to the state and private life (legal documents, letters), written using adaptation of the Coptic alphabet.
History
Old Nubian, according to historical linguists, was the spoken language of the oldest inhabitants of the Nile valley. Adams, Berhens, Griffith and Bechhause-Gerst agree that Nile Nubian has its origins in the Nile valley.[1]
Old Nubian is one of the oldest written African languages and appears to have been adopted from the 10th–11th century as the main language for the civil and religious administration of Makuria. Besides Old Nubian, Koine Greek was widely used, especially in religious contexts, while Coptic mainly predominates in funerary inscriptions.[2] Over time, more and more Old Nubian began to appear in both secular and religious documents (including the Bible), while several grammatical aspects of Greek, including the case, agreement, gender, and tense morphology underwent significant erosion.[3] 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
The script in which nearly all Old Nubian texts have been written is a slanted uncial variant of the Coptic alphabet, originating from the White Monastery in Sohag.[4] The alphabet included three additional letters ⳡ/ɲ/and ⳣ/w/, and ⳟ/ŋ/, the first two deriving from the Meroitic alphabet. The presence of these characters suggest that although the first written evidence of Old Nubian dates to the 8th century, the script must have already been developed in the 6th century, following the collapse of the Meroitic state.[5] Additionally, Old Nubian used the variant ⳝ for the Coptic letter ϭ.
The characters ⲍ, ⲝ/ϩ ⲭ, ⲯ only appear in Greek loanwords. Gemination was indicated by writing double consonants; long vowels were usually not distinguished from short ones. Old Nubian featured two digraphs: ⲟⲩ/u, uː/ and ⲉⲓ/i, iː/. A diaeresis over ⲓ (ⲓ̈) was used to indicate the semivowel/j/. In addition, Old Nubian featured a supralinear stroke, which could indicate:
a vowel that formed the beginning of a syllable or was preceded by ⲗ, ⲛ, ⲣ, ⳝ;
Modern Nobiin is a tonal language; if Old Nubian was tonal as well, the tones were not marked.
Punctuation marks included a high dot •, sometimes substituted by a double backslash \\ (⳹), which was used roughly like an English period or colon; a slash / (⳺), which was used like a question mark; and a double slash // (⳼), which was sometimes used to separate verses.
In 2021, the first modern Nubian typeface based on the style of text written in old Nubian manuscripts called Sawarda was released designed by Hatim-Arbaab Eujayl for a series of educational books teaching Nobiin.[6][7]
Old Nubian has one definite determiner -(ⲓ)ⲗ.[8] The precise function of this morpheme has been a matter of controversy, with some scholars proposing it as nominative case or subjective marker. Both the distribution of the morpheme and comparative evidence from Meroitic, however, point to a use as determiner.[9][10]
Interrogative words include ⳟⲁⲉⲓ "who?"; ⲙⲛ̄ "what?"; and a series of question words based on the root ⲥ̄.
Verbs
The Old Nubian verbal system is by far the most complex part of its grammar, allowing for valency, tense, mood, aspect, person and pluractionality to be expressed on it through a variety of suffixes.
The main distinction between nominal and verbal predicates in a main clause versus a subordinate clause is indicated by the presence of the predicate marker -ⲁ.[13] The major categories, listing from the root of the verb to the right, are as follows:
Valency
Transitive
-ⲁⲣ
Causative
-ⲅⲁⲣ
Inchoative
-ⲁⳟ
Passive
-ⲧⲁⲕ
Pluractionality
Pluractional
-ⳝ
Aspect
Perfective
-ⲉ
Habitual
-ⲕ
Intentional
-ⲁⲇ
Tense
Present
-ⲗ
Past 1
-ⲟⲗ
Past 2
-ⲥ
Person
This can be indicated by a series of subject clitics, which are obligatory only in certain grammatical contexts.[14] They are generally absent when an overt subject is present in the clause, unless the subject has the topic marker -ⲉⲓⲟⲛ.
independent form
agglutinated/merged with a following predicate marker -ⲁ
Boud'hors, Anne (1997). "L'onciale penchée en copte et sa survie jusqu'au XVe siècle en Haute-Égypte". In Déroche, François; Richard, Francis (eds.). Scribes et manuscrits du Moyen-Orient (in French). Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France. pp. 118–133.
Burstein, Stanley (2006). When Greek was an African Language (Speech). Third Annual Snowden Lecture. Harvard University. Retrieved June 19, 2018.
Van Gerven Oei, Vincent W.J. (2011). "The Old Nubian Memorial for King George". In Łajtar, Adam; Van der Vliet, Jacques (eds.). Nubian Voices: Studies in Nubian Culture. The Journal of Juristic Papyrology Supplements XV. Warsaw: Raphael Taubenschlag Foundation. pp. 225–262.
Rilly, Claude (2010). Le méroïtique et sa famille linguistique [Meroitic and its linguistic family]. Afrique et Langage (in French). Vol. 14. Leuven: Peeters. ISBN9789042922372.
Zyhlarz, Ernst (1928). Grundzüge der nubischen Grammatik im christlichen Frühmittelalter (Altnubisch): Grammatik, Texte, Kommentar und Glossar (in German). Leipzig: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft.
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, UK.
Browne, Gerald M., (1989) Old Nubian Texts from Qasr Ibrim II. London, UK.
Browne, Gerald M., (1996) Old Nubian dictionary. Corpus scriptorum Christianorum orientalium, vol. 562. Leuven: Peeters. ISBN90-6831-787-3.
Browne, Gerald M., (1997) Old Nubian dictionary – appendices. Leuven: Peeters. ISBN90-6831-925-6.
Browne, Gerald M., (2002) A grammar of Old Nubian. Munich: LINCOM. ISBN3-89586-893-0.
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