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Beside the alphabet of the Yenisei epitaphs, a second runiform alphabet is known from the Sayan–Altai uplands. Scholars call it South Yenisei. It is used in some seventeen short texts and has a full set of letters of its own.[1] The texts stand on rock faces, on stelae and a menhir, and on objects found in graves, in Khakassia and Tuva.[2] By the authors’ count the monuments of the Yenisei alphabet are about ten times as many.[3]

The finds

Four texts stand on a rock face at Sulek in Khakassia. One more is cut on a slanting stone in the museum at Minusinsk, whose find place is unknown. A silver bowl from a grave of the Chaa-tas culture at Uybat carries a few signs; the grave was dug in 1928, and its finds are in the Hermitage. Only four signs can be counted on one short line of it, and a longer text that an earlier report gave does not appear on the original. Another rock, at Sargol in Tuva, carries a text, and so do two horn bows from the cemetery Aymırlığ I on the Chaa-Khol river, dug in 1971, and a rock on Mount Ozernaya in Khakassia, found in 1977. A menhir stands on Mount Turan in Tuva, and six stelae stand at Edegey, on the rock Çinge, dug in 1978 and 1987.[2]

The alphabet

Of fifty-six sign forms compared with the Yenisei alphabet, thirty-two show similarities, and fourteen agree fully.[4] The authors of the study say themselves that the similarity does not prove a historical kinship.[5]

The text of Edegey I mixes the two alphabets. It originally had thirty-five signs, and three of them, the fifteenth, the eighteenth and the thirtieth, belong to the South Yenisei set.[6] Single South Yenisei signs also turn up in texts of the mountain Altai, which the authors take as a sign that the writers knew the alphabet. They add that the Altai material does not prove both alphabets in use at the same time and place.[7]

Date and decipherment

None of the texts gives a date. The grave at Uybat belongs, by its goods, to the end of the eighth and the first half of the ninth century, and the grave at Aymırlığ to no earlier than the ninth or tenth. The authors place the texts between the eighth and the tenth century.[8]

None of the texts has been read with confidence. The study says that no satisfactory transcription of the text of Edegey I can be given, and that the sound values of several signs are open.[9]

Attribution

The authors tie the texts to the Göktürks of Tuva on the evidence of the graves and stelae. They also say that the texts name no people and that the script need not have had a single bearer.[10] Another proposal allows a Samoyed origin of the alphabet, and names two objections to it: the finds lie among Turkic archaeological objects everywhere, and Samoyeds in the Kyzylkum cannot be explained.[11]

Some sign forms of the alphabet recur in eastern Europe, and the authors infer from this a kinship with the scripts of the Don and the Kuban and of Central Asia. They allow that the southern Siberian material is too thin to decide the question.[12]

Reliability

The South Yenisei texts show that two runiform alphabets stood side by side in the uplands of the Yenisei Kirghiz in the eighth to tenth century. That is all they show so far. They are unread, and no text names a people.

References

  1. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 116, 129
  2. ^ a b Kızlasov 1990, p. 85–116
  3. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 129
  4. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 122
  5. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 124
  6. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 112, 125
  7. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 129–130
  8. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 124–125
  9. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 127–128
  10. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 131–133
  11. ^ Vasilʼev 1993, p. 65
  12. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 122, 132–133

Sources

Literature

  • Leonid R. Kızlasov; İgor L. Kızlasov, Sayan-Altay Türklerinin Yeni Runik Yazısı (1990)
  • D. D. Vasilʼev, Göktürk Yazı Kültürünün Asya’nın Merkezinden Doğu Avrupa’ya Yolu (1993)

Related

What links here4

States
Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate
Places
Altai
Sources
Altai runiform inscriptions · Yenisei inscriptions

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “South Yenisei inscriptions.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/south-yenisei-inscriptions/

Last revised: 8 November 2026