Murfatlar inscriptions

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

The rock monastery of Murfatlar lies about fifteen kilometres south of Constanța.^[1] On the rock walls of its churches stand about sixty inscriptions in runiform signs.^[1] The monastery can be dated more closely than the treasure of Nagyszentmiklós. It belongs to the second half of the ninth century and the first half of the tenth.^[1] In those centuries the region lay under Bulgar rule, in the state that Turkic Atlas treats as Danube Bulgaria.^[2]

The inscriptions

Of the sixty or so texts, only part has been published. One study had data for about half of them. Twenty-seven are in print, and eight of these come with illustrations.^[1] The numbers of that study do not add up exactly, so every count here is approximate.^[3] The texts are short. About a third of them run to two to four lines.^[3]

Two of the inscriptions, numbers 18 and 28, are written in boustrophedon, with the lines running in alternating directions.^[4] Six signs are ligatures, numbers 60 to 65, as in the signs found at Pliska and Preslav.^[5]

The signs

The Murfatlar texts use some forty-four signs that have a sound value. The vessels of Nagyszentmiklós use twenty-two.^[5] Six signs of the two groups match completely in form, and eleven have a counterpart in the other group. That is half of the signs of Nagyszentmiklós.^[5]

The same study sets the signs beside other writing systems. The signs of Nagyszentmiklós stand nearer to the Old Turkic script and to the Székely runes. The signs of Murfatlar show the influence of Old Bulgar and Cyrillic: fourteen of them, a third, have a parallel in Cyrillic and seven in Old Bulgar.^[6] The comparison rests on likeness of form. It says nothing about the sound of the signs.^[5]

Other scripts on the same walls

The churches bear other writing as well, about thirty Cyrillic inscriptions and two each in Old Bulgar and Greek. These are the writing systems well known in the Bulgar lands in the ninth and tenth centuries.^[7]

Decipherments and attributions

No decipherment of the Murfatlar texts has been accepted. Runiform inscriptions found in the Khazar lands and further west have been ascribed to the Khazars, the Avars, the Pechenegs and the Bulgars, and no decipherment proposed for them has been satisfactory.^[8]

One scholar identifies the inscriptions of the Danube, the Volga, the Don and the North Caucasus together as monuments of dialects of Bulgar. This scholar names Murfatlar among the find-places.^[9] The attribution to the Bulgars rests on the position of the site and on that argument, not on a decipherment of the Murfatlar texts themselves.

Four signs stand over the picture of a saint on one of the stones of the Dobruja. Three readers have read them differently, as Pohan, “heathen” (Tryjarski), as John the Baptist (Popkonstantinov) and as Enoh (Georgiev).^[10] The three suggestions show how little the signs fix.

For the other sign finds of the first Bulgar state, see the sign corpus of Danube Bulgaria. For the inscriptions of the Khazar lands, see Runiform inscriptions of the Khazar lands.

References

^ a b c d Kavrikova 2000, p. 241–242
^ Kavrikova 2000, p. 241
^ a b Kavrikova 2000, p. 242
^ Kavrikova 2000, p. 246–247
^ a b c d Kavrikova 2000, p. 243
^ Kavrikova 2000, p. 245–247
^ Kavrikova 2000, p. 245–246
^ Erdal 2004, p. 4
^ Bayçorov 1990, p. 13, 15–16
^ Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 177–178

Sources

Murfatlar inscriptions

Literature

Svetlana Venelinova Kavrikova, Murfatlar ve Nad Sent Mikloş Yazıtlarının Paleografik Karakteristiği (2000)
Lüdmila Dončeva-Petkova, Orta Çağ Bulgaristanı'ndan Runik İşaretler ve Birleşmeler (2000)
Soslanbek Y. Bayçorov, Avrupa’nın Göktürk Harfli Eski Anıtları. Göktürk Harfli Eski Yazının Kuzey Kafkasya, Volga-Don ve Tuna Bölgeleriyle İlişkisi (1990)
Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)