When Greek was an African Language | Page 9

Ironically, the most important example of these
clerics' linguistic virtuosity ultimately threatened the survival of Greek
in Nubia.
The 10th century AD Arab geographer al-Aswani observed that the
Nubians possessed Greek books, which they translate into their own
language. [45] Contemporary Nubian is no longer a written language,

but sometime in the 8 &supth; th or 9 &supth; th century the Greek
alphabet, supplemented by signs borrowed from the Coptic alphabet
and even one from the old Meroitic script, was adapted to write Old
Nubian. [46] A religious literature composed primarily of translated
patristic texts gradually developed. Less than a hundred pages from Old
Nubian books survive, but they confirm al-Aswani's claim that the
Nubians translated Greek religious texts directly into Old Nubian.
At first, Old Nubian was used only for religious purposes, but by the 12
&supth; th century AD, it was being used for legal and commercial
texts, and Old Nubian vocabulary was making its way into Nubian
Greek texts. History was repeating itself. Just as the invention of the
Meroitic script marked the beginning of the end of the use of Egyptian
in Hellenistic and Roman Kush, so the invention of the Old Nubian
script was inexorably leading to the marginalization of Greek in
Medieval Nubia. That process had not yet been completed, however,
when Nubian Christian civilization came to an end in the late 14
&supth; th or 15 &supth; th century AD.
The end was gradual and the process complex. The replacement of the
Fatimid rulers of Egypt with the more aggressive Ayyubids and
Mamlukes, increasing Muslim settlement in Nubia and intermarriage
with the local population, and endemic dynastic strife in Makuria all
played a part. In any event, by the early 14 &supth; th century AD the
kings of Makuria had converted to Islam, and the kingdom itself
disappeared soon afterwards. Alwah in the south and a fragment of
Makuria called the kingdom of Dottawo with its capital at Qasr Ibrim,
however, survived probably for another century. Even more remarkably,
so did Nubian Greek.
One of the most important discoveries of the UNESCO salvage
campaign was the tomb of probably the last archbishop of Qasr Ibrim, a
Nubian named Timotheus. He had been consecrated by the Patriarch of
Alexandria in 1372 AD and sent to Nubia. When he died, he had buried
with him his consecration documents. These were in Coptic and Arabic.
The Coptic text, however, was preceded by the Patriarch's greeting to
Timotheus' Nubian congregation, which was composed in halting

Greek and followed by a postscript in equally unsteady Greek written
by an Egyptian bishop explaining that he had witnessed Timotheus'
consecration. [47] Greek remained the official language of Nubian
Christianity right to the end of its long and remarkable history.

CONCLUSION
The survival of Greek and Greek culture in ancient and medieval Nubia
is unique. Many cultures on the periphery of the Greco-Roman world
used Greek and adopted aspects of Greek culture in antiquity, but they
gradually disappeared when these cultures lost contact with the Roman
Empire. For a good example of the normal pattern we need only look to
Nubia's eastern neighbor, the kingdom of Axum in northeastern
Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Greek was used in Axum for diplomacy and commerce with the Roman
Empire from at least the first century AD to the end of antiquity and is
found on inscriptions and coin legends. When, however, the Arab
conquests severed ties with Rome, Greek disappeared, being replaced
by Ge'ez for literature and Arabic for diplomacy and commerce. Why
the difference?
A first step on the road to an explanation is the recognition that Nubia
was probably never totally isolated from the Byzantine Empire.
Sporadic contact occurred, probably with Islamic Egypt as intermediary,
and Nubian pilgrims are attested at Jerusalem where they could have
met visitors from Byzantium. Some may even have visited
Constantinople themselves. So, the French chronicler Robert of Clari
describes a meeting in 1204 between the leaders of the Fourth Crusade
and a Nubian "king" who had come to Constantinople with ten
companions—he had started with sixty—as part of a pilgrimage that
was supposed to include Rome and the shrine of St. James of
Compostella in Spain. [48]
Whether or not Robert of Clari's Nubian king completed his ambitious
journey is unknown, but there is no reason to assume that he was

unique. Such occasional contacts combined with imports of Byzantine
goods could account for the knowledge of Byzantine artistic and
architectural trends archaeologists have documented in Nubia. They
would not, however, be sufficient to account for the survival of the
Greek language. For that more would have been required, especially
since obvious alternatives with apparent advantages were readily
available, namely, Coptic, which was the