[aatharuv]

The written forms of some Afro-Asiatic languages often did not (and still don't) include vowels, as they didn't provide any information that couldn't be gathered through context. The actual languages did have vowels.

Coptic, the descendant of Ancient Egyptian used by liturgical purpose by Egyptian Christians uses vowels, while very distantly related Arabic and Hebrew (part of the Semitic branch of Afro Asiatic) don't use vowels except in rare cases.