Göktürk Face-Cutting

When a Göktürk died, his kin cut their faces with knives and wept, so that blood and tears ran down together.^[1] Two Chinese histories describe the rite, and so does a Roman envoy who was made to perform it. These are three witnesses who wrote without knowledge of one another.

The rite in the Chinese accounts

The Zhou Shu gives the rite as part of the funeral. The body lay in a tent. The sons, grandsons and kin of both sexes killed sheep and horses and set them before it.^[1] They rode seven times round the tent. Each time they came to its door, they cut their faces with a knife and wept, until blood and tears flowed together. They did this seven times and stopped.^[1]

The wounds were made twice. The burial waited for the season. On the day of the burial the kin made the offering again, and they rode and cut their faces as at the first death.^[1]

The Sui Shu has the same seven circuits round the tent, with the mourners crying aloud. It has the same gashes, with blood and tears falling together.^[2] It does not say that the mourners rode.^[2] The Bei Shi repeats the Zhou Shu word for word. It is therefore not a third witness.^[3]

The Roman envoys of 576

In 576 the Roman envoy Valentinos reached the camp of Türk-shad, whom Menander calls Turxanthos. He found Turxanthos in mourning for his father Istemi.^[4] Turxanthos told the Romans that they had come and found him in the greatest grief. Therefore, as the custom for the dead required, they must score their faces with their knives. Valentinos and those with him at once slashed their cheeks with their own daggers.^[4]

Turxanthos made the demand of foreigners, and the foreigners obeyed. A guest at a Göktürk mourning took on the grief of the house. The Roman embassy had to show that grief on its own faces before it could speak. Menander names the rites for the dead in the Göktürks’ own word, dochia.^[4]

The Orkhon inscription

The south face of the Bilge Khan inscription has the act at the khan’s own funeral in 735. A delegation came under Lisün tai-säŋün, a general with a Chinese title, at the head of five hundred men. The inscription says that all these people sheared their hair and tore their ears and cheeks.^[5] The grammar of Orkhon Turkic derives the name Lisün from the Chinese Li-ts’ün.^[6] The Göktürks wrote this down themselves, of the guests at a khan’s funeral. Like the Roman envoys of 576, the guests took the grief of the house on their own faces.

The Huns at the death of Attila

A century and a quarter earlier, the same act stands in the account of Attila’s funeral in 453.^[7]^[8] Jordanes writes that, as was the custom of that people, the Huns cut off part of their hair and disfigured their faces with deep wounds. In this way the greatest of warriors was mourned not with the laments and tears of women but with the blood of men.^[7]

The two descriptions agree in the act and in its sense: blood in place of tears, or blood with them. Neither source states whether they show one tradition carried across the steppe or two peoples who mourned alike. The question belongs to the debate over the Huns and their origins.

Place in the rite

Face-cutting was one part of the Göktürk funeral. The article on burial sets out the whole funeral: the laying-out in the tent, the sacrifice of animals, the burning of the dead man with his horse, the burial in its season and the stones set at the grave. Three sources of the sixth and seventh centuries record the face-cutting independently. Among the Kazakhs of the nineteenth century, the women still tore their faces with their nails and pulled out their hair at the sight of the dead. The widow sat in the yurt until the seventh day and sang laments before his clothes every day. The singing of laments went on for a year. Memorial feasts followed on the seventh, the fortieth and the hundredth day and after a year.^[9]

References

^ a b c d Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
^ a b Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
^ Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99
^ a b c Menander Protector
^ Thomsen 1924, p. 158
^ Tekin 2003, p. 249
^ a b Jordanes; Mierow 1915, § 255, p. 123
^ Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 143–144
^ Radloff 1884, p. 485–487

Sources

Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
Bei Shi (History of the Northern Dynasties), juan 99 (after Wei Shu, Zhou Shu and Sui Shu)
Menander Protector
Jordanes (after Priscus and Ammianus Marcellinus)
Bilge Khan inscription

Literature

Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), Historici Graeci minores, Bd. II: Menander Protector et Agathias (1871)
Charles Christopher Mierow, The Gothic History of Jordanes in English Version, with an Introduction and a Commentary (1915)
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
Vilhelm Thomsen, Alttürkische Inschriften aus der Mongolei, in Übersetzung und mit Einleitung (1924)
Wilhelm Radloff, Aus Sibirien. Lose Blätter aus meinem Tagebuche. Erster Band (1884)
Talât Tekin, Orhon Türkçesi Grameri (2003)