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History
uncivilized Africans and which Civilizations of Asia,” wrote A similar inscription that dates
we, as African people, must that before the rise of the to 1500 B.C. was found in
begin to correct. Egyptians and Sumerians, there Serabit el-Khadim on Africa’s
The importance of oral culture was a wonderful civilization in Sinai Peninsula and has been
and tradition in Africa and the the fertile African Sahara, where deemed, by linguists, to be the
recent dominance of European people developed perhaps the basis for the so-called “proto-
languages through colonialism, world’s oldest known form of Canaanite” and Phoenician
among other factors, has led writing. scripts.
to the misconception that the
languages of Africa either have These inscriptions, of what some This provides proof that
no written form or have been put archaeologists and linguists Phoenician writing began on
to writing only very recently. have termed “proto-Saharan,” the African continent.
So, the question is, were ancient near the Kharga Oasis, west of
Africans illiterate? Were there what was considered Nubia, EGYPTIAN WRITING
reading and writing systems in may date back to as early as
ancient Africa? 5000 B.C. Perhaps the most famous
writing system of the African
The answer is a huge resounding continent is the ancient Egyptian
yes. We put together a few of (Kemetic) hieroglyphs.
the reading and writing systems
from across the continent. This What many people do not know
list is not exhaustive but a good is that the Egyptians invented
place to begin to research for three scripts: hieroglyphic,
more of the ancient scripts hieratic and demotic. These
that were used by the African Wadi El-Hol or ‘Proto- scripts were used by Egyptians
ancestors. Sinaitic’ (2000 B.C.–1400 for thousands of years.
B.C.)
In 1999, Yale University
archaeologists identified an
alphabetic script in Wadi El-Hol,
a narrow valley between Waset
(Thebes) and Abdu (Abydos)
in southern Egypt. Dating to
The Proto-Saharan about 1900 B.C., the script The Hieroglyphic (4000 B.C.–
(5000–3000 B.C.) bears a resemblance not only 600 A.D.)
to the Egyptian hieroglyphs but
Dr. Clyde Winters, author also to the much older “proto- The ancient Egyptians called
of “The Ancient Black Saharan” writing system. their hieroglyphic script “mdwt
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