Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
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The Ulaangom inscription is a gravestone with eight lines of text cut in Uyghur letters. The Mongolian archaeologist Ts. Dorjsüren found it in 1955 at a place called Khar-us, about fifty kilometres from the town of Ulaangom.[1] The stone is brown.[2] It is not a runiform stone, and its language is not Uyghur.[3]

Script and language

The text is written in Uyghur letters but in a language of the Orkhon kind. Its language still has features of Old Turkic of the Göktürk age, and in style and composition it stands close to the epitaphs of the Yenisei.[2] Its first reader calls its style a copy of the runiform inscriptions of the Orkhon and the Yenisei.[4] One account calls it the oldest text cut in stone in Uyghur letters.[5]

The letter forms are old. The sign for ş is old, d and t are written differently, and the sign for d is the Sogdian one, known from the oldest type of Uyghur script.[4]

The name in the first line

  • Kızıl Kum (Ulaan Gom) YazıtıTurkish
  • Khar-us inscriptionEnglish

The name in the first line has been read in four ways. A. M. Ščerbak reads Boğaz Tegin, and so do E. Vanduy, S. G. Klyashtorny and L. N. Gumilev. Rinčen, from a rubbing, read Dugas Tegin. Peter Zieme reads Bars Tegin. Osman Fikri Sertkaya reads Bugra.[6]

Zieme argues that the Uyghur form of boğaz is boğuz. Ščerbak answers that the language of the stone is not Uyghur, only its letters are, and that in the photograph a vav follows the bä.[3] Sertkaya argues sign by sign: the first sign is b and not d, the second is w, and the third is ğ.[7]

The content in Ščerbak’s reading

In Ščerbak’s reading the speaker calls himself Boğaz Tegin. At seventeen he took part in a campaign and captured a thousand horses. Before his nineteenth year he marched against the Tatars and sent the army east. At the end of his twentieth year the text names Tibet and speaks of Türgesh captives, and at twenty-one he marched against Omuz.[8] For the title see tegin, and for the peoples see Türgesh and the Tibetan empire.

Ščerbak marks several words with question marks. Zieme reads other words in line 4 and in line 5, where Ščerbak reads Türgeş and Zieme holds that the third letter may be yā, which would make that reading wrong.[9]

Date

Ščerbak places the stone in the first half of the eighth century, because the word Türgeş stands in line 5.[4] Zieme rejects the reading and with it the date.[3] Sertkaya gives no date.[10] A date before 744 would put Uyghur letters on stone in Mongolia before the foundation of the Uyghur Khaganate.

Volker Rybatzki holds that the stone has not been shown to belong to the Uyghur Khaganate at all. In content, he says, it is closer to the runiform inscriptions of southern Siberia.[11]

Reliability

As long as the name, the date and the words of line 5 are argued, the stone makes no statement about the age of the khaganates. It is a witness to the use of Uyghur letters for a language of the Orkhon kind, in an age that the studies cannot fix.

References

  1. ^ M. 1994, p. 131
  2. ^ a b Sertkaya 1994 (erschienen Ankara 1995), p. 137
  3. ^ a b c M. 1994, p. 132
  4. ^ a b c M. 1994, p. 135
  5. ^ Sertkaya 1994 (erschienen Ankara 1995), p. 137, 142
  6. ^ Sertkaya 1994 (erschienen Ankara 1995), p. 137–141
  7. ^ Sertkaya 1994 (erschienen Ankara 1995), p. 140–141
  8. ^ M. 1994, p. 135–136
  9. ^ M. 1994, p. 132, 134–135
  10. ^ Sertkaya 1994 (erschienen Ankara 1995), p. 137–144
  11. ^ Rybatzki 2011, p. 64

Sources

Literature

  • Osman Fikri Sertkaya, Kızıl Kum (Ulaan Gom) Yazıtında Geçen Kişi Adı Üzerine (1994 (erschienen Ankara 1995))
  • Şçerbak, Aleksandr M., Ulaangom Yazıtı Üzerine İlâve Düşünceler (1994)
  • Volker Rybatzki, Taryat, Tes ve Şine Usu Yazıtları Arasındaki Dil Bilimsel ve Tarihî Bağlar Üzerine Bazı Notlar (Some Notes on the Philological and Historical Relations Between the Terx, Tes and Sine Usu Inscriptions) (2011)

Related

What links here2

States
Uyghur Khaganate
Battles & Events
Battle of Bolchu

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Ulaangom inscription.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/ulaangom-inscription/

Last revised: 8 November 2026