THE TIFINAGH
The Berber alphabet from A to 
By Rachid RIDOUANE ZIRI
Indigenous origin?
A number of researchers, however, dispute the idea of a Phoenician origin. (St Gsell (1956), J G Fevrier (1956), Friedrich (1966)). The Punic theory runs up against several objections. On the one hand, according to Gsell (1956) it is very likely that the “Phoenicians” did not give themselves the name “Phoenicians”, which is how the Greeks described them. The example of the Amazighs, given another name by the Romans – Barbarus, from which the word “Berber” comes – supports this hypothesis. The second objection comes from the comparison between the two alphabets, which suggests there is scarcely any similarity between Tifinagh and Phoenician. In particular, the absence of any marking of initial vowels in Berber, the very few identical letters (only 6), and the different ways of writing the two scripts (horizontally and from right to left for Punic, vertically and upwards for Tifinagh) have all led to doubts about such a connection of origin.
According to St Gsell (quoted by Khettouche 1996:58), “Basic characters resembling the letters of the Libyan alphabet were already appearing, mixed with images of animals, in the rock-carvings found almost throughout North Africa and which pre-date the first millennium BC.” According to the same author, these writings could have been the result of the evolution of a pictographic system in which pictures would have become phonetic signs. The date around which these characters appeared rules out a link between Libyan and Punic. Gabriel Camps (1968 – pp 47-60) takes the same view: Libyan is pre-Punic and there is no proof that its alphabet was imported. J Friedrich (1966), for his part, believes that the Berber alphabet is a sister to the Semitic alphabet rather than an adopted descendant.
What conclusion?
In the absence of conclusive evidence, we cannot support one hypothesis rather than another. It is clear that the desire to establish an identity pushes us towards accepting and justifying the idea of an indigenous origin. But scientific rigour and logic oblige us to await further work on the Amazigh alphabet to settle this question. The Libyan language has been little explored; it is a very large field of investigation where a lot of specialised research remains to be done. The only indisputable conclusion: the Amazighs had a system of writing in an era when many cultures were still at the prehistoric stage.
The date when Tifinagh appeared
Here also, various theories co-exist while awaiting further study. The only firm evidence comes from an inscription which includes a date: that of the Amazigh king Massinissa to whom is ascribed the construction of a temple in the 10th year of his reign: that is, 139 years before our present era. For some people, the Libyco-Berber transcriptions began to appear around 150 years before our era, and continued for a period of some 600-700 years. But this date runs up against a sizeable objection. Faced with an alphabet already perfected – that of Massinissa’s temple – it would be entirely reasonable to suppose that there would have been a certain period of development, which could not possibly have been achieved in the space of 11 years. Camps (1978) puts the date of the appearance of Tifinagh at least as far back as the 6th century BC.
The evolution of Tifinagh
- Official endorsement by the kings Massinissa and Micipsa during their reigns
- Usage maintained until the Roman period (mentioned by later Latin authors: Fulgence the mythologist, Corippus, etc)
- Disappearance of North Africa with the arrival of the Arabs. No Arab text mentioned this type of writing.
- Its continued use among the Touareg up to the present day
- Its renaissance at the beginning of the 1970s among the Berbers of North Africa (especially those of Algeria and Morocco).
(Read the full article by Rachid Ridouane Ziri : another site)