I04 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXI. No. 525 



SCIENCE: 



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THE ALPHABETS OF THE BERBERS.' 



BT D. a. BEINTON, M.D., LL.D. 



The Berber tribes are called by some writers collectively 

 Hamites, and by others Proto-Semites. From the dawn of his- 

 tory they have occupied most of the area between the Nile Val- 

 ley and the Atlantic Ocean north of the Soudan. They have, 

 also, linguisiic kinsfolk in Abyssinia and in adjacent parts of East 

 Africa. The ancient Ethiopians were of their lineage; Timbucioo 

 was founded by one of their chieftains, and the extinct Guanches 

 of the Canary Islands were members of their slock. To them 

 belonged the classical Libyans, Numidians, Mauritanians, and 

 Getulians, and in later times petty tribes innumerable, the most 

 prominent of which to-day are the Rifians of Morocco, the 

 Kabyles of Algeria, the Touaregs orTamachek of the Sahara, the 

 Mzabis, etc. 



During two short visits to North Africa in the years 1888 and 

 1889, I became much interested in che ethnology of this stock, 

 which offers many most interesting problems. The one to which 

 I shall confine myself at present is its methods of writing. 



The Berber hordes of to-day, with one esception, employ the 

 Arabic alphabet, though it fails to render some of the sounds 

 with precision. The exception is that of the Touaregs of the 

 Sahara. They employ an alphabet of their own, of great an- 

 tiquity and disputed origin. They call it fj^nar, which is a plural 

 from the singular tafinek. As in the Berber dialects, the radicals 

 are single or small groups of consonants, invariable, and inflected 

 by vowel changes, we have in tafinek the quadriliteral radical 

 t-f-n-k. as is held by Rinn; or, if the initial t be regarded as a 

 neuter prefix, there will be the triliteral root/-n k. The primi- 

 tive meaning of this root is a sign, mark, or token by which a 

 place or thing is recognized. Peculiarly-shaped stones or ridges, 

 which serve as landmarks, are called eflnagha (Barth). 



Strictly speaking, the word tifinar applies only to those letters 

 of the alphabet which can be represented by straight lines; 

 while a number of others, expressed by dots, receive the name 

 tiddebakin (Rinn). All letters, whether simple or compound, 

 can be and usually are written by one or other of these methods, 

 straight lines or dots, as is shown by the alphabet presented, from 

 Hanoteau's Grammaire Tamachek. The cursive script, however, 

 permits the use of curved variants in some cases, all of which 

 are shown on the alphabet I submit. 



The Touareg alphabet is far from systematic. The order in 

 which the letters are arranged is purely arbitrary; there is con- 

 siderable difference in the forms of letters in different tribes; 

 there are no vowel-points like those in modern Hebrew, and no 

 accessory signs to represent pure vowels. What is worse, there 

 is no rule as to whether the script should be read from left to 

 right or from right to left, from above downward or from below 

 upward. The assertions made to the contrary by Hanoteau and 

 Halevv are disproved by the documents published by Rinn, which 



' Read at a meeting of the Oriental Club of Plilladelphla, Feb. 9. (See Sci 

 ence, Nov. 18, 1892, p. 290.) 



I show. They were written by native Touaregs to native Toua- 

 regs The writer sometimes begins at a corner of the page, and 

 proceeds from right to left or from left to right as he pleases ; 

 arrived at the further margin, he turns his sheet, so as to go per- 

 pendicularly or in any other way that suits him. As the words 

 are frequently not separated, as punctuation and capital letters 

 are unknown, and as the sequence of the lines is not fixed, it is 

 no easy matter to decipher a Touareg manuscript. When a na- 

 tive undertakes the task, he begins by spelling the consonants 

 aloud, in a chanting voice, applying to them successively the 

 various vowels, until he finds the words which make sense 

 (Hanoteau). 



Imperfect as this alphabet seems, it is in very extensive use 

 among the Touaregs, both men and women. Barth found that 

 his young camel-driver could read it with ease. Captain Bissuel 

 writes: " A de tres rares exceptions, pres tons les Touaregs.de 

 I'ouest, hommes et femmes, savent lire et ecrire." Duveyrier 

 makes a similar statement of the Touaregs of the north. 



Most writers, one following the other, have traced the Touareg 

 alphabet back to the Carthaginians, and have sought to identify 

 its letters with those of the Punic writing. 



Ics history, however, is by no means so easy to unravel. That 

 certain of its letters are identical with the Semitic alphabets is 

 unquestioned; but some of them are not; and those that are 

 alike, may they not be mere loans, or even independent deriva- 

 tive?, from some one common source? 



The material to solve these problems must be drawn from an- 

 cient inscriptions. These are by no means lacking, and prove 

 that an old Berber alphabet was in use in Northern Africa long 

 before the Christian era; yes, in the opinion of some archasolo- 

 gi'sts, as CoUignon and Rinn, long before the founding of Car- 

 thage, 



These inscriptions are ot two classes, the oue carved on dressed 

 stones, such as grave and memorial tablets; the other on native 

 roc^is, in situ, where a smooth surface offered a favorable ex- 

 posure. 



A large number of the former were copied and published by 

 General Faidherbe and have been studied by Professor Halfivy. 

 The latter explains most of the letters by the Punic alphabet, and 

 presentstransliterations and renderings of the epitaphs. His iden- 

 tifications, however, have not satisiied later students. I find, for 

 instance, that while Halevy's " Essai d'Epigraphie Libyque " 

 was published in 1875, Ren6 Basset, probably the most thorough 

 Berber scholar living, writes in 1887 in his ' ' Grammaire Kabyle " : 

 "Le dechiffrement de ces inscriptions est encore aujourd'hui 

 sujet a contestation, au moins pour le valeur de plusieurs let- 

 tres," 



This difficulty very much increases when we come to the other 

 class of inscriptions — those engraved on the living rocks. The 

 mortuary epitaphs collected by Faidherbe may be referred with 

 probability to a period two or three centuries before Christ; but 

 the rupestrian writing is of much more uncertain age. Some of 

 it has the patiue and other attributes of high antiquity ; in other 

 instances it is evidently recent. Examples ot it are found in 

 abundance on both slopes of the Atlas range from Morocco to 

 the Libyan Plateau, Unquestionable instanci s have been re- 

 ported from the Canary Islands by Dr. Verneau ; Barth found 

 them south of Fezzan; Captain Bernard copied some in southern 

 Algiers; last year M, Flamand described a number of stations in 

 southern Oran; Dr. Hamy has made an instructive study of them ; 

 and a number of other travellers have added to our knowledge 

 about them. They are often carefully and cleanly cut into the 

 faces of hard rocks, and are thus calculated to resist the elements 

 for many generations. 



What is noteworthy about the oldest types of these rock-writ- 

 ings is this: that while they contain some letters which are com- 

 mon to the Touareg, Libyan, and Punic alphabets, they also pre- 

 sent a certain number which are not, and which cannot be 

 explained by them. Thus, in the most recent article on the sub- 

 ject, published last year in L'Anthropologie, M. Flamand writes 

 that these glyphs show " bien characterisees, des lettres 

 Libyoo-Berberes, et aussi des signes qu'il a 6t6 jusqu'ici impos- 

 sible de comparer avec aucun de ces alphabets." The copies of 



