The ancient writing system of Nsibidi.

Contrary to the popular belief that the ancient Egyptian glyphs had been deciphered, I recently read that the glyphs actually have never been deciphered.  I also read that the third and the lowest script that appears on the Rosetta Stone, popularly believed to be classical Greek, is actually a form of Hieratic script that the ancient Egyptian scribes adapted to write down Greek language – Martin Bernal, a Professor Emeritus of near Eastern studies at Cornell University somewhat alluded to this claim in his controversial book, The Black Athena!

In my quest to research this claim, I ran into something else that is just as interesting but not as controversial. I found out about the ancient writing script of the Ekoi/Efik and Igbo people called Nsibidi. “Nsibidi is an indigenous adaptable and fluid writing system of two dimensional signs, three dimensional forms of pictographs and ideographs and pantomimed gestures. It originated as an esoteric form of knowledge understood by a select group of people mostly members of a secret society in Southeastern Nigeria which some sources link to the Ejagham and later spread to Efik, Igbo, Ibibio, Efut, Annang and Banyang speaking areas. Some of the signs of the Nsibidi spread to the Caribbean and Brazil during slavery.”

We are all very familiar with the ancient Egyptian scripts i.e, hieroglyphic (Medu Neter), demotic, and Hieratic. However, there are many other ancient African scripts: Ethiopic script (Geez), Sudan script (Meroitic), Bassa script of Liberia, Vai script, and Nsibidi script to name but a few.



Nsibidi used as fracal patterns on an ankara cloth.