Ancient Africa Writings – Nsibidi
Oral tradition plays a very strong role in African culture, leading to the erroneous conclusion that Africans south of the Sahara do not have a history of writing.
Although writing in Africa is not well known due to the dominance of colonial languages, archaeological, historical, and epigraphic evidence point to the fact that literacy began in Africa south of the Sahara in times BCE and a few remain in use today albeit for ceremonial and decorative uses.
A majority of modern writing systems around the world originated from the hieroglyphs, making modern writing unarguably an African invention. Although the Egyptian hieroglyphics is the most celebrated of the Continent’s writing systems, it is not the only writing system that emerged from the Motherland. Using symbols and writing in various ways, Africans invented many writing systems and the earliest form of writing on the Continent was a syllabic system that included hundreds of phonetic signs. These were shortened over time to no less than 22 key signs, which were used as alphabets by the Egyptians, Meroites, Phonesians and Ethiopians.
By far the oldest form of writing recorded in Africa aside Hieroglyphs is the Nsibidi writing. The Nsibidi set of symbols is independent of Roman, Latin or Arabic influence and a completely indigenous creation of its African inventors. Also known as Nsibiri, Nchibiddi or Nchibiddy, Nsibidi writing is an ancient ideographic writing system that is indigenous to the Uguakima, Ebe or Uyanga ethnic groups of western Africa and dates back between 4000 and 5000 BC. The writing in found in the cultures of Cross River among the Ekoi, Efik, Igbo people, and related peoples of southeastern Nigeria and Cameroon.
Early forms of Nsibidi appeared on excavated pottery from the Calabar region dating between 400 and 1400 CE. Thousands of Nsibidi characters were divided into a sacred version and a public, more decorative version which was once taught in schools to children had over 500 characters. Colonialists came to the knowledge of Nsibidi in 1904 when T.D. Maxwell noticed the symbols carved on pottery and used in body art. Western education and Christian doctrine drastically reduced the number of Nsibidi-literate people leaving the secret society version as the last surviving form of the symbols. Nsibidi was transported to Cuba and Haiti via the Atlantic slave trade, where the anaforuana and veve symbols stem from Nsibidi.
Recent research findings are providing astounding evidence that reconstructs the history of Africa through the Ikom Monoliths and the Nsibidi writings. NSIBIDI means “writing of/written by the dwarfs”. Some African mythology refers to dwarfs as ‘the first people’ or the ‘first inhabitants of the earth’.
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