the monumental form was written top to bottom in columns going right to left. Monumental letters were oriented to face the beginning of the text, a feature inherited from their hieroglyphic origin. Being primarily alphasyllabic, the Meroitic script worked differently than Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some scholars, such as Harald Haarmann, believe that the vowel letters of Meroitic are evidence for an influence of the Greek alphabet in its development. There were 23 letters in the Meroitic alphasyllabary, including four vowels. In the transcription established by Hintze (based on earlier versions by Griffith), they are: a appears only at the beginning of a word e was used principally in foreign names i and o were used like vowels in the Latin or Greek alphabets. The fifteen consonants are conventionally transcribed: p, b, m, d, t, s, n, r, l, k, q, ḫ, ẖ, w, y These consonants are understood to have an inherent vowel value /a/, such that p should generally be understood as /pa/. An additional series of characters is understood to represent consonants with inherent vowels other than /a/: ne, se, te, to These values were established from evidence such as Egyptian names borrowed into Meroitic. That is, the Meroitic letter which looks like an owl in monumental inscriptions, or like a numeral three in cursive Meroitic, we transcribe as m, and it is believed to have been pronounced as [m]. However, this is a historical reconstruction, and while m is not in much doubt, the pronunciations of some of the other letters are much less certain. The three vowels i a o were presumably pronounced /i a u/. Ḫ is thought to have been a velar fricative, as the ch in Scottish loch or German Bach. H̱ was a similar sound, perhaps uvular as g in Dutch dag or palatal as in German ich. Q was perhaps a uvular stop, as in Arabic Qatar. S may have been like s in sun. An /n/ was omitted in writing when it occurred before any of several other consonants within a word. D is uncertain. Griffith first transcribed it as r, and Rowan believes that was closer to its actual value. It corresponds to Egyptian and Greek /d/ when initial or after an /n/ (unwritten in Meroitic), but to /r/ between vowels, and does not seem to have affected the vowel a the way the other alveolar obstruents t n s