I read about Meroitic, an ancient alphasyllabic language and, from the 3rd century BCE-early 5th century CE, a writing system, as well. The primary language of the ancient Kingdom of Meroë, which lay in Nubia, along the southern stretch of the Nile (corresponding today to southern Egypt and northern Sudan), its usage extended beyond the life and confines of that kingdom. Meroitic had both a cursive and hieroglyphic form, of which the former is older and the latter was used exclusively for royal and religious purposes. The cursive form is more prevalent among extant texts, of which more than 1100 currently exist and include carvings on stone (e.g., funerary inscriptions and epitaphs), as well as writings on the surfaces of ceramics, papyrus, wood, and skins. 

Meroitic has not been linked to known language families; while it shows some influence of the ancient Egyptian language, it also departs from that written system in significant ways (for instance, Meroitic hieroglyphics are written in the opposite direction from the Egyptian). An indigenous East-African contribution to writing systems of the ancient world, Meroitic is an important part of our global heritage.

Sources:

“Meroe: writing,” Digital Egypt for Universities. University College London, 2002. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/nubia/mwriting.html [accessed February 14, 2024]

“Meroitic Script,” in World History Commons, https://worldhistorycommons.org/meroitic-script [accessed February 14, 2024]

Rally, Claude and Alex de Voogt, The Meroitic Language and Writing System. Cambridge University Press, 2012. Online excerpt. https://assets.cambridge.org/97811070/08663/excerpt/9781107008663_excerpt.htm [accessed February 14, 2024]

Reader, John. Africa: A Biography of the Continent. Vintage, 1997, p. 197-9.