The Meroitic language was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period (attested from 300 BCE) and went extinct about 400 CE. It was written in two forms of the Meroitic alphabet: Meroitic Cursive, which was written with a stylus and was used for general record-keeping; and Meroitic Hieroglyphic, which was carved in stone or used for royal or religious documents. It is poorly understood owing to the scarcity of bilingual texts.
The classification of Meroitic has long been uncertain due to the scarcity of data. Claude Rilly in 2007 convinced the annual Nilo-Saharan Conference that Meroitic is an Eastern Sudanic language, closest to Nubian and other similar languages.
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