The Old Turkic script (also known variously as Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

used by the

Göktürks The Göktürks (; ), also known as Türks, Celestial Turks or Blue Turks, were a Turkic people in medieval Inner Asia. The Göktürks, under the leadership of Bumin Qaghan (d. 552) and his sons, succeeded the Rouran Khaganate as the main powe ...

and other early Turkic

khanate A khanate ( ) or khaganate refers to historic polity, polities ruled by a Khan (title), khan, khagan, khatun, or khanum. Khanates were typically nomadic Mongol and Turkic peoples, Turkic or Tatars, Tatar societies located on the Eurasian Steppe, ...

s from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the

Old Turkic Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Kh ...

language.Scharlipp, Wolfgang (2000). ''An Introduction to the Old Turkish Runic Inscriptions''. Verlag auf dem Ruffel, Engelschoff. . The script is named after the

Orkhon Valley The Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape sprawls along the banks of the Orkhon River in Central Mongolia, some 320 km west from the capital Ulaanbaatar. It was inscribed by UNESCO in the World Heritage List as representing the development of ...

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

, where early 8th-century inscriptions were discovered in an 1889 expedition by Nikolai Yadrintsev. These

Orkhon inscriptions The Orkhon inscriptions are bilingual texts in Middle Chinese and Old Turkic, the latter written in the Old Turkic alphabet, carved into two memorial steles erected in the early 8th century by the Göktürks in the Orkhon Valley in what is modern- ...

were published by

Vasily Radlov Vasily Vasilievich Radlov or Friedrich Wilhelm Radloff (; in Berlin – 12 May 1918 in Petrograd) was a German-Russian linguist, ethnographer, and archaeologist, often considered to be the founder of Turkology, the scientific study of Turki ...

and deciphered by the Danish philologist

Vilhelm Thomsen Vilhelm Ludwig Peter Thomsen (25 January 1842 – 12 May 1927) was a Denmark, Danish linguistics, linguist and Turkologist. He successfully deciphered the Turkic Orkhon inscriptions which were discovered during the expedition of Nikolai Yadrintse ...

in 1893. This writing system was later used within the

Uyghur Khaganate The Uyghur Khaganate (also Uyghur Empire or Uighur Khaganate, self defined as Toquz-Oghuz country; , Tang-era names, with modern Hanyu Pinyin: or ) was a Turkic empire that existed for about a century between the mid 8th and 9th centuries. It ...

. Additionally, a Yenisei variant is known from 9th-century

Yenisei Kyrgyz The Yenisei Kyrgyz () were an ancient Turkic people who dwelled along the upper Yenisei River in the southern portion of the Minusinsk Depression from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. The heart of their homeland was the forested T ...

inscriptions, and it has likely cousins in the Talas Valley of

Turkestan Turkestan,; ; ; ; also spelled Turkistan, is a historical region in Central Asia corresponding to the regions of Transoxiana and East Turkestan (Xinjiang). The region is located in the northwest of modern day China and to the northwest of its ...

and the

Old Hungarian alphabet Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England * Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, M ...

of the 10th century. Words were usually written from right to left.

Origins

Many scientists, starting with

(1893), suggest that the Old Turkic script is derived from descendants of the

Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects und ...

in particular via the Pahlavi and

Sogdian alphabet The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdia. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, a descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of th ...

s of

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

, or possibly via

Kharosthi Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara alongside vari ...

used to write

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

. It has also been speculated that tamgas (livestock brands used by Eurasian nomads) were one of the sources of the Old Turkic script, but despite similarities in shape and forms, this hypothesis has been widely rejected as unverifiable, largely because early tamgas are too poorly attested and understood to be subject to a thorough comparison. The text is most likely derived from Aramaic via the

and

Syriac alphabet The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic languages, Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares sim ...

. Contemporary Chinese sources conflict as to whether the Turks had a written language by the 6th century. The 7th century '' Book of Zhou'' mentions that the Turks had a written language similar to that of the Sogdians. Two other sources, the ''

Book of Sui The ''Book of Sui'' () is the official history of the Sui dynasty, which ruled China in the years AD 581–618. It ranks among the official Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written by Yan Shigu, Kong Yingda, and Zhangsun Wuji, ...

'' and the ''

History of the Northern Dynasties The ''History of the Northern Dynasties'' () is one of the official Chinese historical works in the '' Twenty-Four Histories'' canon. The text contains 100 volumes and covers the period from 386 to 618 CE: the histories of Northern Wei, Wester ...

'', claim that the Turks did not have a written language. According to István Vásáry, the Old Turkic script was invented under the rule of the first khagans and was modelled after the Sogdian fashion. Several variants of the script came into being as early as the first half of the 6th century.

Corpus

The Old Turkic corpus consists of about two hundredErdal, Marcel. 2004. A grammar of Old Turkic. Leiden, Brill. p. 7 inscriptions, plus a number of manuscripts. The inscriptions, dating from the 8th to 10th century, were discovered in present-day Mongolia (the area of the

Second Turkic Khaganate The Second Turkic Khaganate was a khaganate in Central and Eastern Asia founded by the Ashina clan of the Göktürks that lasted between 682–744. It was preceded by the Eastern Turkic Khaganate (552–630) and the early Tang dynasty period ( ...

and the

that succeeded it), in the upper Yenisei basin of central-south

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

, and, in smaller numbers, in the

Altai Mountains The Altai Mountains (), also spelled Altay Mountains, are a mountain range in Central Asia, Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan converge, and where the rivers Irtysh and Ob River, Ob have their headwaters. The ...

and

Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...

. The texts are mostly

epitaph An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...

s (official or private), but there are also graffiti and a handful of short inscriptions found on archaeological artifacts, including a number of bronze mirrors. The website of th
Language Committee of Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan
lists 54 inscriptions from the Orkhon area, 106 from the Yenisei area, 15 from the Talas area, and 78 from the Altai area. The most famous of the inscriptions are the two monuments (

obelisk An obelisk (; , diminutive of (') ' spit, nail, pointed pillar') is a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal or pyramidion top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called ''tekhenu'', the Greeks used th ...

s) which were erected in the

between 732 and 735 in honor of the Göktürk prince Kül Tigin and his brother the emperor Bilge Kağan. The Tonyukuk inscription, a monument situated somewhat farther east, is slightly earlier, dating to . These inscriptions relate in epic language the legendary origins of the Turks, the golden age of their history, their subjugation by the Chinese ( Tang-Gokturk wars), and their liberation by

Bilge The bilge of a ship or boat is the part of the hull that would rest on the ground if the vessel were unsupported by water. The "turn of the bilge" is the transition from the bottom of a hull to the sides of a hull. Internally, the bilges (us ...

. The Old Turkic manuscripts, of which there are none earlier than the 9th century, were found in present-day Xinjiang and represent

Old Uyghur Old Uyghur () was a Turkic language spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries as well as in Gansu. History Old Uyghur evolved from Old Turkic, a Siberian Turkic language, after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and remnants of it migrated ...

, a different Turkic dialect from the one represented in the Old Turkic inscriptions in the Orkhon valley and elsewhere. They include

Irk Bitig ''Irk Bitig'' or ''Irq Bitig'' (), known as the ''Book of Omens'' or ''Book of Divination'' in English, is a 9th-century manuscript book on divination that was discovered in the "Library Cave" of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China, by Aurel Ste ...

, a 9th-century manuscript book on divination.

Alphabet

Old Turkic being a synharmonic language, a number of consonant signs are divided into two "synharmonic sets", one for front vowels and the other for back vowels. Such vowels can be taken as intrinsic to the consonant sign, giving the Old Turkic alphabet an aspect of an

abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...

script. In these cases, it is customary to use superscript numerals ¹ and ² to mark consonant signs used with back and front vowels, respectively. This convention was introduced by Thomsen (1893), and followed by Gabain (1941), Malov (1951) and Tekin (1968). A colon-like symbol () is sometimes used as a word separator. In some cases a ring () is used instead. A reading example (right to left): 𐱅𐰭𐰼𐰃 transliterated t²ñr²i, this spells the name of the Turkic sky god, Täñri ().

Variants

Variants of the script were found from Mongolia and

in the east to the Balkans in the west. The preserved inscriptions were dated to between the 8th and 10th centuries. These alphabets are divided into four groups by Kyzlasov (1994) * Asiatic group (includes Orkhon proper) *

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

tic group *

Southern Europe Southern Europe is also known as Mediterranean Europe, as its geography is marked by the Mediterranean Sea. Definitions of southern Europe include some or all of these countries and regions: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, C ...

group The Asiatic group is further divided into three related alphabets: * Orkhon alphabet, Göktürks, 8th to 10th centuries * Yenisei alphabet, ** Talas alphabet, a derivative of the Yenisei alphabet, Kangly or

Karluks The Karluks (also Qarluqs, Qarluks, Karluqs, , Qarluq, Para-Mongolic languages, Para-Mongol: Harluut, zh, s=葛逻禄, t=葛邏祿 ''Géluólù'' ; customary phonetic: ''Gelu, Khololo, Khorlo'', , ''Khallokh'', ''Qarluq'') were a prominent no ...

8th to 10th centuries. Talas inscriptions include Terek-Say rock inscriptions found in the 1897, Koysary text, Bakaiyr gorge inscriptions, Kalbak-Tash 6 and 12 inscriptions, Talas alphabet has 29 identified letters.Kyzlasov I. L.; "Writings of Eurasian Steppes", Eastern Literature, Moscow, 1994, pp. 98–100 The Eurasiatic group is further divided into five related alphabets: * Achiktash, used in

Sogdia Sogdia () or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemen ...

8th to 10th centuries. * South-Yenisei, used by the Göktürks 8th to 10th centuries. * Two especially similar alphabets: the Don alphabet, used by the

Khazars The Khazars ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a nomadic Turkic people who, in the late 6th century CE, established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, a ...

, 8th to 10th centuries; and the Kuban alphabet, used by the

Bulgars The Bulgars (also Bulghars, Bulgari, Bolgars, Bolghars, Bolgari, Proto-Bulgarians) were Turkic peoples, Turkic Nomad, semi-nomadic warrior tribes that flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Volga region between the 5th and 7th centu ...

, 8th to 13th centuries. Inscriptions in both alphabets are found in the

Pontic–Caspian steppe The Pontic–Caspian Steppe is a steppe extending across Eastern Europe to Central Asia, formed by the Caspian and Pontic steppes. It stretches from the northern shores of the Black Sea (the ''Pontus Euxinus'' of antiquity) to the northern a ...

and on the banks of the

Kama ''Kama'' (Sanskrit: काम, ) is the concept of pleasure, enjoyment and desire in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. It can also refer to "desire, wish, longing" in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh literature.Monier Williamsका� ...

river. * Tisza, used by the

Pechenegs The Pechenegs () or Patzinaks, , Middle Turkic languages, Middle Turkic: , , , , , , ka, პაჭანიკი, , , ; sh-Latn-Cyrl, Pečenezi, separator=/, Печенези, also known as Pecheneg Turks were a semi-nomadic Turkic peopl ...

8th to 10th centuries. A number of alphabets are incompletely collected due to the limitations of the extant inscriptions. Evidence in the study of the Turkic scripts includes Turkic-Chinese bilingual inscriptions, contemporaneous Turkic inscriptions in the Greek alphabet, literal translations into Slavic languages, and paper fragments with Turkic cursive writing from religion,

Manichaeism Manichaeism (; in ; ) is an endangered former major world religion currently only practiced in China around Cao'an,R. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''. SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 found ...

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

, and legal subjects of the 8th to 10th centuries found in

Sample text

Transcription of part of Bilge Kağan's inscription (lines 36-38).

Unicode

The Unicode block for Old Turkic is U+10C00–U+10C4F. It was added to the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

standard in October 2009, with the release of version 5.2. It includes separate "Orkhon" and "Yenisei" variants of individual characters. Since

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

Unicode Old Turkic writing support was added in the Segoe font.

References

Citations

Sources

* Diringer, David. ''The Alphabet: a Key to the History of Mankind'', New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1948, pp. 313–315. * Erdal, Marcel. 2004. ''A grammar of Old Turkic''. Leiden & Boston: Brill. * Guzev, V.G., Kljashtornyj, S.G
''The Turkic Runic script: Is the hypothesis of its indigenous origin no more viable?''
Rocznik Orientalistyczny, T. 49, Z. 2 (1994), wyd. 1995 9 * LFaulmann, Carl. 1990 (1880). ''Das Buch der Schrift. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn''. * Février, James G. ''Histoire de l'écriture'', Paris: Payot, 1948, pp. 311–317 * Ishjatms, N. "Nomads in Eastern Central Asia", in the "History of civilizations of Central Asia", Volume 2, UNESCO Publishing, 1996, * * Kyzlasov, I.L. "Runic Scripts of Eurasian Steppes", Moscow, Eastern Literature, 1994, *Malov, S.E. 1951, ''Pamjatniki Drevnitjurkskoj Pisʹmennosti'' (Памятники Древнитюркской Письменности), Moskva & Leningrad. * Muxamadiev, Azgar. (1995). Turanian Writing (Туранская Письменность). In Zakiev, M. Z.(Ed.), Problemy lingvoėtnoistorii tatarskogo naroda (Проблемы лингвоэтноистории татарского народа). Kazan: Akademija Nauk Tatarstana. *Róna-Tas, A. 1991. ''An introduction to Turkology''. Szeged. * Tekin, Talat. ''A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic. Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series'', vol. 69 (Bloomington/The Hague: Mouton, 1968) * Thomsen, Vilhelm. ''Inscriptions de l'Orkhon déchiffrées'', ''Suomalais-ugrilainen seura, Helsinki Toimituksia, no. 5'' Helsingfors: La société de littérature Finnois

* Vasilʹiev, D.D. ''Korpus tjurkskix runičeskix pamjatnikov Bassina Eniseja'' 'Corpus of the Turkic Runic Monuments of the Yenisei Basin'' Leningrad: USSR Academy of Science, 1983 * von Gabain, A. 1941. ''Alttürkische Grammatik mit Bibliographie, Lesestücken und Wörterverzeichnis, auch Neutürkisch''. Mit vier Schrifttafeln und sieben Schriftproben. (Porta Linguarum Orientalium; 23) Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz.

External links

Türk bitig - Old Turkic inscriptions, Texts, TranslationsGokturkish Keyboard by Isa SARIOld Turkic Virtual Keyboard by Pamukkale Universityglyph table
(kyrgyz.ru) *

(in Mongolian)
Göktürükçe çevirici
(An online converter for Turkish alphabet ) {{list of writing systems Runiform scripts Alphabets Göktürks History of literature in China Obsolete writing systems Turkic alphabets Alphabets used by Turkic languages Right-to-left writing systems