Eastern Sudanic

The Eastern Sudanic languages form a branch of Nilo-Saharan once centred on present-day Sudan and spread, through the later expansion of their Nilotic members, from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania. Besides the Nilotic group, the family includes the Nubian languages of the Nile bend and the Daju tongues of Darfur, Kordofan and the Chad border.

It holds some of the earliest written evidence for African languages: Old Nubian, recorded from the eighth to the fifteenth century in an adapted Coptic alphabet, served the Christian kingdom of Makuria for homilies, legal deeds and royal correspondence. The undeciphered Meroitic of Kush may belong to the same family.

In the Marrah Mountains of Darfur the Daju ruled a kingdom from perhaps the twelfth century until Tunjur conquerors overthrew them in the fourteenth century.