Funeral of Istemi (576)

When the Roman envoy Valentinos reached the camp of Turxanthos in 576, he found the Göktürk prince in the greatest sorrow. The prince gave the reason: “my father, Silzibul, is recently dead”.^[1] Modern accounts take Silzibul as one of Menander’s forms of the name of Istemi, the ruler of the western Göktürks.^[2] Others reject the equation. The sounds of the two names do not meet, and Istemi’s name has a Greek form of its own.^[3] The Chinese sources name no son of Istemi besides Tardush. Tardush was already khan of the Western Frontier Region, so he would have come to the burial of his father.^[4] In their view, Silzibul was one of eight Göktürk chiefs, and the funeral was not Istemi’s.^[3] The envoys of Valentinos’ embassy were made to take part in the mourning.^[1] Their report survives in Menander. It is the fullest account of a Göktürk ruler’s funeral in a Greek source.

The death

Menander does not say how or where Istemi died.^[5] Turxanthos was burying him, so he had presumably died close at hand.^[6] A modern account dates his death to 575 and gives his rule as almost twenty-three years.^[7] Elsewhere the same work gives his rule in the west as the years 552 to 576.^[8] The embassy that found his son in mourning falls between December 575 and December 576.^[9]

The rites

Turxanthos told the envoys that they had found him in the greatest sorrow.^[1] They had to follow the custom of his people for the dead and slash their faces with daggers.^[1] At once Valentinos and his companions cut their own cheeks with their own daggers.^[1] The Chinese histories describe the same rite, the cutting of the face. In the Zhou Shu the kin of the dead ride seven times round the tent. Each time they come to the door, they cut their faces with a knife and weep, until blood and tears run together.^[10] The same mourning custom of the Asian nomads is recorded at the funeral of Attila.^[6]

On one of the days of mourning Turxanthos brought four bound Hunnic captives for his dead father.^[1] He set the wretched men in the middle with his father’s horses.^[1] In his own tongue he bade them go there and tell his father Silzibul how great to him … At that point the text breaks off.^[1] What was done with the four men is lost in the gap.^[5] According to some scholars, the four captives and the horses were sacrificed at the rites.^[11] In the Zhou Shu’s account of the Göktürk custom, the horse the dead man had ridden was burnt with his body on a chosen day.^[10]

Menander gives the Göktürk name for the rites for the dead: in their own language they called them dogia.^[1] Some scholars connect the word with a Turkic word for the funeral feast or wake.^[11]

The succession

When Turxanthos had completed his father’s burial rites, he spoke with Valentinos many more times.^[1] Then he sent him on to the leaders of the interior, above all to his brother Tardu on the mountain Ektel.^[1] Tardu is Tardush, Istemi’s son and successor in the west. His rule there lasted until 603.^[12] In the same weeks Turxanthos sent the army that took Bosporos in the Crimea.^[13]

The funeral closed the reign of the man who had carried the Göktürk realm from the Altai to the Volga. It is known only because a Roman embassy happened to arrive in the days of mourning. The envoys had to share the rite they described.

References

^ a b c d e f g h i j k Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1
^ Blockley 1985, p. 262
^ a b Sinor 1990, p. 305
^ Sinor 1990, p. 303,305
^ a b Menander Protector
^ a b Blockley 1985, p. 277
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 293
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 427
^ Blockley 1985, p. 274
^ a b Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 130
^ Golden 1992, p. 131
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1–19.2

Sources

Menander Protector
Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50

Literature

R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)