Meroitic Hieroglyphic Letter E

It marks e, a reduced vowel, or no vowel by context.

Meroitic works as an alphasyllabary: most consonant signs also carry an unwritten a sound. 𐦁 changes that default. It can mark the vowel e, a reduced neutral vowel called schwa, or no separate vowel, as in a consonant cluster or at a word's end. It is a spelling component inside a word, not a word by itself.

For initial e and i, direct spellings were used until the first century CE; later spellings put an unpronounced y before them. As of 2026, researchers understand the sign's sound values more securely than the meaning of every Meroitic text.

Why does 𐦁 look Egyptian?

Its form belongs to a Kushite script shaped by Egyptian writing.

Meroitic was the language of Kush, a kingdom south of Egypt. The earliest datable cursive Meroitic text is about 200 BCE; the earliest datable hieroglyphic text is about 150 BCE. Hieroglyphic Meroitic appears on royal monuments and temple inscriptions, while cursive served general writing.

Meroitic hieroglyphs borrowed sign forms from Egyptian hieroglyphs, while Meroitic cursive developed partly from Demotic, a later Egyptian cursive script. The two Meroitic registers had corresponding signs but were not mixed.