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Tifinagh

Alphabets
Origin from 300 BCE

An alphabet used to write Berber (Amazigh) languages across North Africa and the Sahara, descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber script attested in inscriptions from around the third century BCE onward. Traditional Tifinagh was maintained for centuries mainly by Tuareg communities of the Sahara, largely as a script for short inscriptions rather than extended prose, while a standardized Neo-Tifinagh alphabet was developed in the twentieth century and adopted as an official script for Berber languages in Morocco and, alongside Latin and Arabic script, recognized in Algeria. Its geometric, dot-and-line letterforms are visually distinct from every neighboring script tradition.

Facts
Script Type
Alphabet 1
Directionality
left-to-right (modern Neo-Tifinagh); historically variable, including boustrophedon and vertical 1
In Use Since (Year)
from 300 BCE 1
Connections

Descends From

The Libyco-Berber alphabet, an ancient abjad used by Berber peoples of North Africa and the Canary Islands during the first millennium BC, died out in northern areas under Roman and Byzantine rule but spread south into the Sahara, where it evolved into the Tuareg Tifinagh alphabet still used today.

Script Of

Source Wikipedia: Tifinagh
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Tifinagh

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