Blemmyan, Blemmye, Old Beja or Old Bedauye is an extinct

Afroasiatic language The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the ...

of the

Cushitic The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of 2 ...

branch that was spoken by the

Blemmyes The Blemmyes ( or Βλέμυες, ''Blémues'' , Latin: ''Blemmyae'') were an Eastern Desert people who appeared in written sources from the 7th century BC until the 8th century AD. By the late 4th century, they had occupied Lower Nubia and esta ...

in the

Eastern Desert The Eastern Desert (known archaically as Arabia or the Arabian Desert) is the part of the Sahara Desert that is located east of the Nile River. It spans of northeastern Africa and is bordered by the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea to the east, a ...

. Its identification as an early form of Beja is generally accepted.

Classification

Multiple researchers have proposed that the language of the Blemmyes was an ancestor of modern Beja.

Francis Llewellyn Griffith Francis Llewellyn Griffith (27 May 1862 – 14 March 1934) was an eminent British Egyptologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early life and education F. Ll. Griffith was born in Brighton on 27 May 1862 where his father, Rev. Dr. ...

identified the language of an

ostracon An ostracon (Greek language, Greek: ''ostrakon'', plural ''ostraka'') is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeology, archaeological or epigraphy, epigraphical context, ''ostraca'' refer ...

discovered at

Saqqara Saqqara ( : saqqāra ), also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English , is an Egyptian village in the markaz (county) of Badrashin in the Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for ...

as "probably in the Blemmye language." Nubiologist Gerald M. Browne and linguist Klaus Wedekind have both attempted to demonstrate that this language is an ancestor of Beja, and were both of the opinion that it represented a fragment of

Psalm 30 Psalm 30 is the 30th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "I will extol thee, O ; for thou hast lifted me up". The Book of Psalms is part of the third section of the Tanakh, Hebrew Bible and a book of the ...

. The Egyptologist

Helmut Satzinger Helmut Satzinger (born January 21, 1938, in Linz) is an Austrian Egyptologist and Coptologist. He studied Egyptology, Arabic Philology and African Languages at the university of Vienna and, for 1 year, at Cairo University. Immediately after obtai ...

has analyzed Blemmyan names from Egyptian, Greek, and Coptic sources, and similarly concluded that the Blemmyan language is an ancestor of Beja. Meroiticist and archaeologist Claude Rilly concurs:

References

Languages of Egypt Languages of Sudan Cushitic languages Extinct languages of Africa {{Afroasiatic-lang-stub