This English account is available in Paris in 1836, where first de Saulcy and then Célestin Judas learn about it. The mystery begins to split open: They finally say to themselves, what if this writing that is so ancient were still being written?
So, at the same moment, in Paris, Ali Effendi ben Hamdane Khodja is telling de Saulcy about his stay with the Kabylians when he was traveling with his father. De Saulcy translates this account into French. To thank him, Ali Effendi agrees to lend one or two letters that he still has from the correspondence between his father and the bey Ahmed.
The Parisian scholar is confronted by the following puzzle: The main text is in Arab; but, running along the sides, the bey Ahmed has written several lines of a secret writing: just simple code, de Saulcy thinks. Plagued by curiosity, however, he gets the idea overnight to compare these signs with the ones copied by Dr. Oudney in Cyrenaica. Then, to decipher the first line, de Saulcy remembers that any letter written between Muslims begins with the sacred formula: “In the name of God the Merciful, the Forgiving! …”
Suddenly the Frenchman understands: and what if the bey Ahmed, who could obviously speak Chaoui Berber, has learned — thanks to Saharan nomads passing through Constantine — this mysterious writing and used it as a code, thinking that this alphabet, now so rare, is the only thing that can ward off the danger of interception?
In short, de Saulcy concludes in amazement, contrary to what Venture de Paradis believed when he made a point of learning Berber but thought it normal to write it in Arabic characters, in short, what if Berber had always been a written language? Was still written? Since the dawn of time?
First in Constantine, then after having been driven from his city, the bey Ahmed keeps up a political and military correspondence using this script, whereas, the majority of the population at that time — in the middle of the nineteenth century — have almost entirely lost the ancient alphabet. The resisting leader uses it to write dangerous things, actually to ward off danger!
He will surrender in 1847, a year after the emir Abd el-Kader. There is no mention of the language in which he signs his surrender; moreover, did he sign anything at all on this occasion? In 1830, when the dey of Algiers, without really putting up a fight, writes his capitulation, it is in Turkish — the official language of the time — that he hands himself over to the invader.
After the defeat of the bey Ahmed, the Tuaregs will remain free for seventy more years. As if the ancestral writing, maintained outside of any state of submission, went hand in hand with the intractability and mobility of a people who, in a gesture of supreme elegance, let their women preserve the writing while their men wage war in the sun or dance before the fires at night …
Finally then, Célestin Judas, returning to the inscriptions that English travelers brought back from the Fezzan and Cyrenaica, and aware of de Saulcy’s intuitions, sees the solution — clear as day: Whether Libyan or Berber, for thousands of years this has been the same writing with a few variations: ancient and neo-Libyan.
This is the 1850s. It is during this period that Gustave Flaubert visits Constantine and mentions the grandson of Salah Bey, as well as his French superior, Captain Boissonnet, who is in correspondence with de Saulcy. Boissonnet has a highly valued informant, el Hadj Abd el-Kader, the secretary of the sheik of Touggourt, who traveled in the past with nomad caravanners. Boissonnet gets “a small example of tifinagh writing” from el-Kader and sends it to the orientalist in Paris. “I was struck by the similarity between these written characters and the ones on the Libyan inscription from Dougga,” he says in conclusion.
Of course, this informant has not visited his country for six or seven years, so his memory must not be completely reliable. Captain Boissonnet manages to convince him to resume his contacts with the nomads, maybe even to undertake another trip himself — his seventeenth! — to the Touat.
Will el Hadj Abd el-Kader of Touggourt risk such a thing? The fact remains that, the next year, he sends Captain Boissonnet of Constantine a second list, this time more complete, of the signs currently in use among the Veiled Men.
Once again Célestin Judas provides a meticulous account, comparing the signs on the stele from Dougga, the characters brought back by the Englishmen from Cyrenaica, and those sent to Paris by the captain in Constantine. The same signs are on the stone and on the rocks of the Fezzan and written on their camels’ flanks by Tuareg warriors.
It is 1857—just before the English and French travelers to Dougga discover to their despair the “barbarous crime” committed by Consul Reade against the bilingual stele. But in this same moment the meaning itself — and the music and the throbbing orality — of this alphabet comes back to life, no longer stifled!
Thus, during the 1860s, the stirring course of a very ancient civilization is restored. Though its memory had, indeed, preserved the language in all its toughness and bitter-sweetness, the letters now return to their source, seek to be written again, and by everyone!
While the secret is revealed, how many women and men are there still, from the oasis of Siwa in Egypt to the Atlantic and even beyond — to the Canary Islands, how many of them — how many of us still — all singing, weeping, ululating, but also loving or rather being in a position where it is impossible to love — yes, how many of us are there who, although the heirs of the bey Ahmed, the Tuaregs and the last century and the aediles, bilingual Roman magistrates in charge of the monument of Dougga, feel exiled from their first writing?
6. THE STELE AND THE FLAMES
DOUGGA. IT IS THE SPRING of the year 138 B.C.E. The city notables are presenting, therefore, a magnificent cenotaph to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of the great Masinissa. After reigning sixty years as king of all Numidia, he had died at the age of ninety. It was he who made it possible for the Romans to take Carthage for the last time, conquering it completely.
It has been eight years since Hannibal’s age-old capital went up in flames after a siege lasting almost five years. What astonishing, unflagging energy and desperate resistance on the part of the Carthaginians! How amazingly the Romans pulled together following their senate’s implacable decree: “Delenda Carthago!” And in the end — those April days in 146 B.C.E.
Masinissa saw the siege begin and saw the glorious capital gradually suffocate. But before Carthage will die, consumed by tortures and fire, he dies of old age.
Masinissa died before he could see his dogged enemy vanish. His son, Micipsa, who is present at this commemoration at Dougga, witnessed the tragedy; his other son, Gulussa, with his thousands of fearless, mounted soldiers, took part in the event, but on Scipio’s side, the side of the conquerors.
When the carnage begins, Scipio Emilien (who has summoned from Rome his teacher of Greek literature, the writer Polybe, who was thus fated to be the chronicler of the fall of Carthage), this Scipio — adopted grandson of Hannibal’s rival, Scipio the Great, decides to save some part of the splendor of Carthage.
Of course, the ancient treasure taken from the Syracusans was returned to them; of course, fifty thousand survivors were spared and left as slaves; but what could he preserve of Carthage, other than its writing — its books?