Large Boulder with Runic Inscriptions
In 1962, archaeologist D. F. Vinnik discovered another large boulder with runic inscriptions in the same area of the Talas Valley where ancient Turkic inscriptions on boulders had previously been found. The stone was transported to Frunze, to the historical museum. In the upper, flatter part of the stone, there is a poorly preserved inscription. To this day, it remains unreadable. As can be seen from the drawing (fig. 3, 4), some letters have a distinctive shape.
The sign
Fifteen years have passed since the publication of the first drawing of the text of the twelfth monument, but no attempts have been made to read it so far. We are publishing a photograph and a new drawing of the inscription for the first time, hoping that this publication will serve as an incentive for the study of its text.
In this regard, we present a comparative table of the letters of the ancient Turkic runic script of Talas and the Orkhon-Yenisei region (see Table 1): Talas I — letters found in inscriptions carved on boulders and rocks; Talas II — signs on a wooden stick. The table was compiled using tables from previously published works by I. A. Batmanov "Talas Monuments of Ancient Turkic Writing" (1971, pp. 28-29), A. S. Amanzholov "Materials and Research on the History of Ancient Turkic Writing" (ADD, 1975, pp. 21-22), A. N. Kononov "Grammar of the Language of Turkic Runic Monuments of the 7th-9th Centuries" (1980, pp. 58-59), D. D. Vasilyev "Corpus of Turkic Runic Monuments of the Yenisei Basin" (1983, p. 7). The Talas sections (I, II) have been partially supplemented.
The phonetic values of the signs on the wooden stick are given according to S. E. Malov.
