Meroitic Cursive Number Ninety Thousand

As of 2026-09-14, Keyman accepts 9 followed by three zeros. This is the shortcut for 𐧬 on its Meroitic Cursive keyboard; other layouts may use a different sequence.

What did 𐧬 count in its original setting?

It recorded large values in Kushite Meroitic writing. Meroitic was used in the Nile Valley kingdom of Kush. Its scripts are attested from around the second or third century BCE. The Akinidad stela, an inscribed stone monument dated to the late first century BCE, records a Meroitic numeral above the ten-thousand rank. Meroitic numerals served in tax records, measurement texts, funerary inscriptions, and monumental dates or quantities.

Demotic was Egyptian cursive writing; Meroitic Cursive’s forms were based on it. The Meroitic hieroglyphic script, used for formal inscriptions, was based on Egyptian hieroglyphs. Scholar Griffith also noted that Meroitic numeral shapes resemble late Egyptian Hieratic, another cursive writing tradition; resemblance does not show that the two numeral systems were identical. Meroitic numerals continued into the fourth century CE. Nubian writing followed in the region, and Coptic had superseded the Meroitic scripts by the sixth century. Like the rest of Meroitic writing, the numerals run right to left.