The Kyrgyz are one of the ancient peoples of Central Asia.
Together with other Turkic peoples and tribes, they used ancient Turkic runic writing during the early medieval period, which was replaced by Old Uyghur script in the 10th-11th centuries. The runic monuments are unique texts that have preserved many common features of the dialects of the tribes living in the areas where this script was used.
As early as the late 17th century, Russian cartographer, geographer, and historian of Siberia, Semyon Ulyanovich Remezov (1642-1720), marked on his map "Drawing of all Siberian cities and lands and the drawing of the entire waterless and hard-to-pass stony steppe" in the upper reaches of the Talas River: "Orkhon stone, summer snow." What information he had is unknown to us. However, Remezov's note was confirmed exactly two hundred years later when a stone with ancient Turkic runes was found in the area of Ayyr-Tam-Oy, on the left bank of the Talas River.
In 1896, teacher Hastev and the district chief, amateur local historian V. A. Kallaur, discovered the first monument of ancient Turkic writing in the Talas Valley. After this find, interest in the area increased. V. A. Kallaur sent a report of his discovery and a copy of the inscription to Tashkent to the Turkestan Circle of Archaeology Enthusiasts. At the same time, by the decision of the circle's members' meeting on December 11, 1896, a copy of the inscription was sent to St. Petersburg to V. R. Rosen for determining the meaning and nature of the writing. In his response, V. R. Rosen indicated that the very fact of "finding an inscription in the territory of Turkestan written in ancient Turkic script should be recognized as extremely important scientifically... and the Turkestan Circle of Archaeology Enthusiasts could provide invaluable service to science by properly preserving such inscriptions."
At the request of the general meeting of the circle, the first stone was transported by V. A. Kallaur to the city of Aulne-Ata (modern-day Jambyl). In 1925, it was examined by M. E. Masson, and in the early 1930s, the stone was taken to Leningrad, where it is currently stored in the State Hermitage Museum. After reviewing the copy of the inscription (February 25, 1897), P. M. Melioransky identified 17 characters of the Orkhon alphabet in it. V. V. Radlov published an article analyzing the text. In particular, he wrote that "this inscription is of special interest because it is written in ancient Turkic script and in the Turkic language and proves that this script was also used by Turkic tribes of Central Asia. This is a fact of such importance that all residents of the Turkestan region should pay attention to it so that they can assist in the search for and preservation of similar monuments of deep antiquity in Turkestan."
In January 1898, V. A. Kallaur was informed that not far from the place where the first stone with the runic inscription was located, there was another similar stone. Until the spring of 1898, V. A. Kallaur did not have the opportunity to visit the specified location, but upon learning of the arrival of an archaeological expedition from the Finno-Ugric Scientific Society (led by G. I. Geikel), which had received open sheets from the Russian Archaeological Commission for conducting research in the vicinity of Dmitrievskoye, he hurried there and, ahead of the expedition by a day, found two more stones on May 5, 500 steps west of the location of the first monument. One of them, weighing about 20 pounds, had five lines of inscription, while the sixth was severely damaged. On the other, larger stone, traces of eleven lines of inscription were preserved. Subsequently, this monument was referred to in literature as the second Talas monument.
The Finnish expedition that arrived on May 6 could only confirm V. A. Kallaur's find. He then sent a report of his discoveries and drawings of the inscriptions to Tashkent, where they were soon published. Based on these drawings, M. M. Melioransky presented an article in St. Petersburg, providing a translation of the inscription on one of the stones.
At the request of Finnish scholars, one of the stones was transported to the capital of Finland. However, which specific monument is in Helsinki and where it is stored remains unknown.
In May of the same year, 1898, in the Terek-Say gorge on the southern slope of the Kyrgyz ridge, near a large vertical Sogdian-Turkic inscription, V. A. Kallaur identified two horizontal lines of runic writing, and later — two more inscriptions. These short runic lines, carved at different times, have been published several times, but to this day, their readings and translations cannot be considered reliable. The reason for this is the poor preservation of the inscriptions and difficulties in obtaining impressions. The third line is not reproduced by some researchers due to poor visibility. S. E. Malov published four short lines based on a drawing sent to him by M. E. Masson. Later, researchers of this complex of monuments discovered a small inscription, consisting of 11 characters, standing alone a little lower.
In 1932, at the Achiq-Tash sulfur ore deposit, at a depth of 5 m, a piece of a fir stick was accidentally discovered, on four sides of which runic signs were carved. Based on the drawing and photograph made by M. E. Masson, S. E. Malov worked on the deciphering of the text of this stick, attempting to interpret the text based on Orkhon-Yenisei runes. S. E. Malov noted that "this stick with runes represents exceptional interest both due to its material — wood, and due to the content of its inscription," however, he doubted that the inscription on the stick was runic. Many signs of the inscription differ from Orkhon and Yenisei graphemes and have no parallels in the nearby Talas ancient Turkic monuments; at the same time, in form, they resemble Pecheneg writing and Hungarian carvings.
In the late 1930s, Turkish Turkologist H. N. Orkun proposed a translation of this inscription. Soviet Turkologist A. M. Shcherbak, assigning a special place to the stick among the Talas epigraphic monuments, provided his version of its reading and translation, taking into account the similarity of the signs of the inscription on the stick with the so-called European Turkic runes.
He emphasized that "the study of Talas antiquities is of great importance for the history of Pecheneg runes as well as for the history of runic writing of the Turks in general."
In the early 1960s, G. F. Turchaninov studied the inscription on the stick, finding many similarities between the Talas monument and inscriptions on stones from the Mayatskoye settlement. He suggested that the inscription on the stick could have been made in medieval Ossetian (Alan) script, and thus, this inscription was written not by Turks, but by an Ossetian (Alan) named Siyag (Siag), who lived in Talas and had already Turkified. Based on his research, G. F. Turchaninov and B. I. Pankratov, who analyzed the ethnonyms read by Turchaninov in the text of the stick according to Chinese sources, dated this monument no earlier than the 12th century. It should be noted that the methodology of reading ancient Turkic monuments proposed by G. F. Turchaninov does not meet all the requirements for the study of these monuments, so we cannot agree with his conclusions.
Kazakh scholar T. Suleimenov proposed his reading of the inscription on the stick, dating it to the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, adding unnecessary signs to it, which is difficult to agree with at this time. In 1963 and 1971, this inscription was published twice in Frunze, both times with readings and translations by S. E. Malov.
It can be concluded that the reading of the inscription on the Talas stick cannot be considered definitively established. The question of which type of Turkic runes it belongs to remains open.
In the fall of 1961, archaeologist P. N. Kozhemyako, during an archaeological-topographic survey of the Ayyr-Tam-Oy area in Kyrk-Kazyke, an area of previous finds, discovered another boulder with an ancient Turkic inscription, which was named the "eighth Talas monument."
This find sparked new searches. That same year, at the initiative of I. A. Batmanov, the Institute of Language and Literature and the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR sent a special team to the Talas Valley. The group was led by archaeologist D. F. Vinnik, who was well acquainted with the area. It included scientific staff from the Turkology sector of the IYL: U. Asanaliev, K. Ashiraliyev, and Ch. Dzhumagulov. The team worked intensively. Despite the bad weather, the entire area of the find was surveyed, checking all encountered stones, large and small, and barely noticeable boulders were dug out of the ground.
As a result, the ninth, tenth, and eleventh monuments were discovered. Thus, in 1961, four boulders with Turkic inscriptions were found. In addition, the second monument was rediscovered. This boulder, the heaviest among those found here, lay with the inscription facing down (it can be assumed that this was done intentionally, perhaps even by V. A. Kallaur himself, to protect the inscription from destruction or damage by visitors).
The eleventh monument remains unstudied due to the poor preservation of the inscription and the rough surface of the stone. The clearest inscriptions are on the ninth and tenth monuments, although it is unclear why the inscription (only two lines) on the ninth stone is located at the edges, while the middle of the stone, which is very convenient for writing, remains empty. Or is it an unfinished inscription?
The materials of the expedition were published. The history of the discovery of the monuments and the results of archaeological research were dedicated to an article by D. F. Vinnik and I. I. Kozhemyako, while I. A. Batmanov provided the reading and translation of the inscriptions, and Ch. Dzhumagulov wrote an article about the second monument.
In 1962, D. F. Vinnik found another, twelfth monument in the Ayyr-Tam-Oy area — a boulder of considerable size. In its upper part, there is an inscription that is difficult to read. Its drawing was published by I. A. Batmanov.
In other areas of the republic, similar monuments on stones and rocks were not known for a long time. In 1926, I. I. Ivanov found a stone (about 1 m long and 60 cm high) with several runic signs and Arabic letters in the Koy-Sary area on the southeastern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul. As P. P. Ivanov himself noted, the surface of the stone, which had lain underwater for a long time, was covered with a layer of lime, and therefore the relief of the inscription was significantly smoothed. In March 1929, P. P. Ivanov reported his find in a letter to V. V. Bartold, who, in turn, passed this information to S. E. Malov. According to S. E. Malov's determination, a runic inscription is carved on the stone. The discovery of the runic inscription on Issyk-Kul was unexpected for many researchers. It significantly expanded the understanding of the area of distribution of runic writing in Kyrgyzstan. Considering that, apart from this inscription, no runic monuments have been found on the shores of Issyk-Kul, as well as in the Chui Valley and in the Naryn region, we have the right to consider the Koy-Sary find very important in many respects. It serves as precise evidence of the existence of runic writing in the vicinity of Issyk-Kul up to the beginning of the 9th century (this is how A. N. Bernshtein dated the inscription).
There are grounds to hope that other runic monuments may be discovered in this area. The Koy-Sary monument is not bilingual; the Arabic inscription was apparently written later than the runic one. The monument has been published several times, but there is still no satisfactory reading of the runic text. The situation is complicated by the fact that specialists currently do not have the opportunity to verify the reading from the original — the monument is lost, and its location has not yet been established.
In 1961, an archaeological team from the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR, led by Yu. D. Baruzdin, found a fragment of a vessel with ancient Turkic runic signs during excavations of the Ak-Tepes settlement in the Batken region. According to the archaeologists' determination, the vessel to which the fragment belongs was handmade, and the clay dough contains a mixture of coarse sand. Six runic graphemes and part of the seventh have been completely preserved. From the translation provided by I. A. Batmanov, it follows that the inscription indicated that the vessel was intended for storing flour. I. A. Batmanov read:...
... nch unun... any ichi unun 'its interior with flour....
However, judging by the fragment, the inscription must have been quite large in volume. Among the paleographic features, the unusual combination of the graphemes N and Ch is noteworthy (if one agrees with I. A. Batmanov's reading), which does not find parallels in other monuments of Orkhon-Yenisei (and Talas) runes. In the same year, D. Baruzdin found a stele at the burial site of Kara-Beyit, not far from the village of Sary-Tash in the Alai Valley. The stele stood vertically in the northwestern part of the stone enclosure of mound No. 5. Signs that vaguely resemble runes on the Talas stick are carved or scratched on four sides of the stele. Reading these signs is very difficult; it is also unclear whether this is an inscription or random carvings.
In May 1977, in the Tynbas area, on the territory of the Lenin collective farm, we, with the help of students from the John-Aryk secondary school in the Talas region, found a river boulder with an ancient Turkic runic inscription. This find, which sparked great interest among specialists, was soon published. The text of the inscription is clear, without any damage; however, its reading and translation, as noted in our publication, need to be clarified.
Of great interest is the discovery of a stone portrait — a carved image of a male face on a piece of sandstone. Runic signs are inscribed on its chin. This monument was found near the city of Talas. The find once again confirms that the Talas Valley was the main center of ancient Turkic runic writing monuments in Semirechye (see below).
In the fall of 1981, an expedition from the Institute of History and the Institute of Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR (led by I. Kozhomberdiev and Ch. Dzhumagulov) discovered three inscriptions on stone in the Talas Ala-Too, in the Kuru-Bakayir gorge, at an altitude of 2500 m above sea level — one Sogdian or Old Uyghur and two runic.
In 1982, the fourth Talas ancient Turkic monument, discovered by V. A. Kallaur in 1898, was reopened simultaneously with G. I. Geikel's expedition in the Ayyr-Tam-Oy area and was considered lost.
Thus, over the past two decades, the collection of ancient Turkic runic epigraphy monuments in Kyrgyzstan has significantly increased with new finds. Their number now reaches 20.
Ancient Turkic runic writing contains invaluable inscriptions in terms of historical and cultural significance. Runic writing was primarily intended for texts on stone and wood; the durability of the material is responsible for the preservation of the monuments.
Runic monuments are of equal interest to specialists in the fields of Turkic linguistics, history, and historical ethnography of Turkic peoples. Ancient Turkic runes recorded the oldest form of the written literary language of the ancestors of modern Turkic peoples. Runic monuments testify to the high level of linguistic culture of the ancient Turks. At the same time, large runic Orkhon inscriptions indicate the existence of bards among the Turks, an oral-epic tradition that interacted with written literature. According to E. R. Tenishev, the language of ancient Turkic Orkhon-Yenisei writing was a supra-dialectal, literary language used by various Turkic tribes or tribal unions — Oghuz, Uyghurs, Kyrgyz, Kipchaks, and others. At the same time, one cannot help but notice traces of dialectal differences and spoken forms in the runic texts. A little later, in the 11th century, much data on ancient Turkic dialectal differentiation is provided by Mahmud Kashgari. A number of problems regarding the interaction of ancient Turkic koine and dialects and the reflection of this process in the written language of runic monuments will become clearer when new monuments are discovered and more substantiated interpretations of already known inscriptions are provided. In this regard, the decision of the Soviet Committee of Turkologists to begin the publication (by regions) of "Corpora of Turkic Runic Monuments of the USSR" has been made.
Unlike the widely known runic monuments of the upper reaches of the Yenisei and Northern Mongolia, the Talas inscriptions are largely carved on large river boulders.
The first information about the runic writing of the Yenisei was reported by traveler N. G. Spafary (1675), so the history of the study of ancient Turkic runes spans over 300 years. Since the deciphering of the runes by V. Thomsen (1892), about 100 years have passed. Many generations of scholars have engaged in reading, translating, grammatical and lexical analysis, as well as historical interpretation of runic inscriptions. One of the problems that arose in science very early on, but has not lost its relevance to this day, is the problem of the origin of Turkic runic writing. In recent years, a number of new works dedicated to this topic have appeared, but it cannot be said that the problem of the genesis of ancient Turkic runic writing has been fully resolved.
V. Thomsen, one of the first to address this problem, expressed the opinion that Turkic runes are genetically related to Aramaic letters in their Pahlavi (Middle Persian) and Sogdian varieties.
This point of view was supported at the time by O. Donier and R. Gautier, later by S. V. Kiselev, and in recent years by S. G. Klyashtorny, V. A. Livshits, A. M. Shcherbak, A. N. Kononov, and others. V. A. Livshits, who attempted to trace the connection of ancient Turkic runic graphemes with the Sogdian alphabet in detail, writes: "Runic writing arose as a result of a simultaneous conscious processing of the Sogdian alphabet, rather than as a consequence of its prolonged spontaneous transformation or several attempts at different times to apply it for recording ancient Turkic texts. Sogdian graphemes in most cases served as the raw material for the creators of runes." V. A. Livshits proposed a reconstruction of the changes in Sogdian graphic prototypes in the process of creating runic writing.
A fundamentally different hypothesis — the origin of runic graphemes from Turkic tribal tamgas — was put forward in the 19th century by N. A. Aristov, N. Mallitsky, A. Shifner, and others. N. A. Aristov wrote: "The tribal tamgas that existed since ancient times were later used as letters in the Orkhon-Yenisei alphabet." In the discussion about the origin of runes and the ethnic attribution of runic monuments, which began long before the deciphering of the Orkhon inscriptions by V. Thomsen, participated P. A. Pallas, J. P. Abel-Rémusat, G. I. Spassky, Yu. Klaproth, M. A. Castren, I. R. Aspelin, E. D. Polivanov, and many others. The hypothesis of the origin of runes from tribal tamgas and petroglyphs is still supported by a number of scholars today. In particular, Kazakh researcher A. Makhmudov believes that the creators of the ancient Turkic runic alphabet were the Turks themselves and that this alphabet traces back to pictographic drawings and tamgas, primarily those found in Kazakhstan.
Another Kazakh philologist, G. G. Musabaev, categorically denies the hypothesis of Aramaic-Sogdian origin of Turkic runes, insisting that runes arose as a result of the evolution of tamgas from pictograms to ideograms and then to an alphabet.
After the discovery near the village of Issyk, in the foothills of the Zailiyskiy Alatau, of the burial of a Saka chieftain with a rich inventory, including a silver cup with an inscription made in an unknown script, some writers and philologists attempted to compare this script (sometimes referred to as "Issyk") with ancient Turkic runes. Poet O. Suleimenov, one of the first to propose such a comparison, wrote that the "Issyk" script is a direct predecessor of Orkhon-Yenisei runes.
At the same time, he provided a reading and translation of the text of the inscription on the silver cup: "The son of the khan died at twenty-three [years].
His name and glory [of the people] have faded." However, Kazakh scholars K. Akishev and A. Makhmudov believe that O. Suleimenov provided an incorrect reading and that many of his comparisons of "Issyk" graphemes with runic letters are unjustified. It was also noted that the epitaph inscription on the cup (this is O. Suleimenov's interpretation) is quite strange, as one would expect an epitaph to be established on a grave — on a mound, but not inside a burial.
The ideas of O. Suleimenov are close to the statements of A. S. Amanzholov. Investigating small inscriptions and individual signs discovered in recent years on stones and various objects in Kazakhstan, A. S. Amanzholov concludes that "the Turkic runic alphabet, judging by its paleography, has a very ancient history. It would be fundamentally erroneous to consider it a product of individual creativity. According to the available data, Turkic-speaking tribes used this alphabetic writing from the middle of the 1st millennium BC until the end of the 1st millennium AD. The existence of alphabetic writing among early nomadic tribes of Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan is currently confirmed by two Turkic runic inscriptions found in burials of the 5th-4th centuries BC. All this allows for a new perspective on the historical era in which the Turkic ethnic type and the first alphabetic writing, serving to record ancient Turkic speech, were formed."
The question of where, in what territory, ancient Turkic writing originated is equally contentious.
Some believe that it originated "somewhere in the Talas region, as a result of borrowing or transformation of some other alphabet and spread from there in two opposite directions: to the east (Orkhon, Yenisei, and other types of writing) and to the west (Pecheneg runes)." G. G. Musabaev, relying on found inscriptions (?) with signs similar to petroglyphs, insisted on the autochthonous nature of ancient Turkic writing and its widespread use in ancient Semirechye. According to A. S. Amanzholov, the Turkic runic alphabet was formed in Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan no later than the middle of the 1st millennium BC. "Paleographic analysis," he writes, "in turn leads to the conclusion of a very early date for the formation of the Turkic runic alphabet in Southern Siberia and Semirechye — no later than the middle of the 1st millennium BC. This alphabet shows a close genetic connection, firstly, with early types of the ancient Greek alphabet (especially with those of Asia Minor and Italy) and, secondly, with North Semitic-Phoenician (including early Aramaic) and South Semitic alphabets. To some extent, this aligns with archaeological data on the deep cultural ties of early nomads of Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan with the population of Central Asia in the 1st millennium BC." Such an early date for the creation of the runic alphabet is not accepted by most researchers. It is particularly noted that in the kaganic epitaph on the stele found during the excavations of the Bugut mound (Northwest Mongolia, Orkhon River basin), there is no ancient Turkic text — the epitaph was composed in Sogdian in the late 70s of the 6th century. Meanwhile, if ancient Turkic runic writing had already existed during the reign of the Turkic kaganate, the epitaph for one of the kagans of this state would have been composed in ancient Turkic and executed in runic writing.
S. V. Kiselev once expressed the opinion that Semirechye was the cradle, the starting point for the spread of runic writing. This hypothesis is not shared by many. However, the assumptions of S. V. Kiselev, A. M. Shcherbak, and Kazakh scholars cannot be overlooked.
Regarding the genre of Talas monuments on boulders, there is no disagreement among researchers — they are epitaphs. They are associated with the local ruling dynasty of Karachor (the "black voivodes"). There are grounds to believe that the dynasty lasted about 40-50 years.
Talas runic inscriptions have been studied multiple times. The texts of the inscriptions have been translated into Kyrgyz.
The monuments will be included in Volume IV ("Runic Monuments of Central Asia") of the "Corpora of Ancient Turkic Writing Monuments," prepared jointly by the Department of Written Monuments of Eastern Peoples of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Institute of Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz SSR. The data from the Talas monuments have been used in writing the relevant sections of the "History of the Kyrgyz SSR." Runic inscriptions of Kyrgyzstan have been widely utilized by D. D. Vasilyev for paleographic analysis of ancient Turkic runes. There is no doubt that these monuments will be studied by new generations of Turkologists. The data obtained will undoubtedly serve as one of the foundational materials for clarifying a number of questions regarding the culture, language, and ethnogenesis of the Kyrgyz people.