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Libyco-Berber Alphabet

Abjads

The Libyco-Berber alphabet is an abjad writing system that was used during the first millennium BC by various Berber peoples of North Africa and the Canary Islands to write ancient varieties of the Berber language. It is attested from the first millennium BC to the 4th to 7th century AD across what is now Morocco, northern Algeria, Tunisia, northern Libya and the Canary Islands. The use of the Libyco-Berber alphabet died out in northern areas during or after Roman and Byzantine rule, but it spread south into the Sahara desert and evolved there into the Tuareg Tifinagh alphabet still used by the Tuareg Berbers today.

Facts
Classification
Script Status
Extinct 1
Script Type
Abjad 1
Connections

Ancestor Of

Tifinagh, Scripts

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

Libyco-Berber inscriptions record the ancient Numidian/Libyan language ancestral to the modern Berber languages, the same collective entity its descendant script Tifinagh already connects to.

Sources
1. Libyco-Berber alphabet (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead section
  • Script status, Libyco-Berber Alphabet entity page
    The use of the Libyco-Berber alphabet died out in northern areas during or after Roman and Byzantine rule, but it spread south into the Sahara desert and evolved there into the Tuareg Tifinagh alphabet still used by the Tuareg Berbers today.
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