West African writing systems and Egyptian hieroglyphics

What can writing systems in West Africa tell us about hieroglyphics in Egypt? The opening gives us the reason for the comparison: these are complex systems using picture signs, and the histories of the West African systems may suggest how Egyptian writing developed.

We have two names to keep straight. Bamum was developed for the Bamum language. Nsibidi is used among speakers of several languages. We don't need to memorize all the language names immediately; we do need to avoid treating the two systems as interchangeable.

The Nsibidi story begins with a legend: a large baboon revealed the system's secrets. We aren't being asked to accept that a baboon literally taught people to write. The belief is what matters. The text connects divine inspiration with resistance to later changes in a language and its symbols.

Then the baboon itself becomes evidence. An Egyptian association between a divine baboon and Thoth resembles the Nigerian story. Coincidence is possible, but the writer thinks shared belief is unlikely to be purely accidental. Perhaps an Egyptian belief traveled to Nigeria; perhaps a more widely held African belief reached Egypt. Keep both routes open. A proposed connection doesn't settle which system came first or the exact route by which an idea traveled.

Bamum gives us a different kind of history. About a century ago, Njoya created a system for his language. He asked people to draw and name objects, then used their pictures to make 466 symbols. Later, he reduced the system to 80 characters representing syllables. A picture sign doesn't therefore have to mean only the object it depicts; it can stand for a sound.

He also put the system to work through schools, printing, and history texts. This isn't just a list of symbols someone imagined and abandoned.

Why spend so much time on one inventor?

Because Egyptian writing appears in the record already complex. Njoya's example raises a possibility: perhaps one person developed the Egyptian system too. That could help explain its form and sudden recorded appearance. We haven't proved that it happened, but we have an example showing why the proposal is worth considering.

The next suggestion follows from that: hieroglyphics could have represented sounds from the beginning. Imagine a picture of a boat used for a syllable rather than only to mean boat. Its appearance wouldn't, by itself, establish an earlier stage in which it represented nothing but that object.

The final comparison separates stimulation from borrowing. Njoya was impressed by Arabic writing without deriving his system from it. Similarly, an Egyptian inventor might have been encouraged by the existence of Mesopotamian writing without copying that different system.

The two West African examples therefore help in different ways: shared traditions suggest possible historical connections, while a documented inventor offers a model for how a complex system might arise. The repeated language of possibility matters. We are exploring Egyptian origins, not announcing that every uncertainty has been resolved.