Bamum script
Escritura bamum
- Date
- 1896-1910 · confidence high
- Place
- Foumban, West Region, Cameroon
- Credited to
- King Ibrahim Njoya
- People
- 👤 Njoya Ibrahima1876–1933
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A script created by royal order, which evolved in a few versions from pictographic to an 80-sign syllabary. It was used for chronicles, medicine, a map of the kingdom and administration.
The French colonial administration suppressed it in the 1930s; it is now encoded in Unicode.
What it led to
- a written chronicle of the Bamum kingdom
- royal schools in the Bamum language
- an example of the deliberate invention of a script