More than a hundred runiform inscriptions are known from the Altai in the Russian republic of that name, and nearly all are cut into rock.[1] The first was reported in 1819 from the Chaarys river.[1] Their texts are mostly short, and many are damaged.[2] The studies that print them give no date for any of them.[3]

The count

The counts differ with the method and the year. A project that recorded the inscriptions from 2003 documented about ninety by 2012, and its summary speaks of more than a hundred discovered.[2] A count of the same year gives 101 for the republic.[1] A study of 2021 says that the number has passed one hundred.[4]

The inscriptions are named after the mountain, hill, river or village where they stand. They fall into groups by find area, among them Kalbak-Tash, Bichiktu-Boom and Möndür-Sokkon, and Tuekta, Kosh-Agach and Karban count as further centres of the script in the Altai.[5]

Recording

In 2002 the republic adopted a programme for the preservation of the Altai language, which includes the recording of the runiform inscriptions. L. Tybykova led yearly expeditions from 2003 to 2007, and in 2006 a joint project of M. Erdal and Tybykova began, coordinated by Irina Nevskaya.[6] The project published a catalogue in 2012 and an online edition with squeezes and comparative readings.[7] Many texts on ridges and river banks have been damaged by road works, so that they can no longer be read in full.[7]

Kalbak-Tash

Kalbak-Tash is a rock shrine near kilometre 726 of the Chuya road in the mountain Altai.[8] It was first mentioned in 1912, studied as a whole for the first time in 1980, and photographed in 1981, and twelve of its inscriptions were published in 1981.[8] D. D. Vasilyev and V. Kubarev found four more texts there in 1991 under fallen stones. The runiform texts stand among drawings of animals on the rock.[8]

Vasilyev’s decipherment of the four texts, A-47 to A-50, gives short personal sentences. Three contain the cry of grief esiz, “alas”, and one names a man, Bert Apa, for whom the writer wrote.[9] Vasilyev takes them for visitors’ notes at a holy place on an old road.[10] One text calls a land kara bölöŋ, which he takes for Tibet, because the word bölön names the envoys of the Tibetan khan in the Kül Tegin inscription.[11] The decipherment is his, and the identification with Tibet is a guess; see the Tibetan empire.

Kurgak I

The inscription Kurgak I, number A 78, is a single line of eighty-five signs on a rock on the north slope of Mount Kurgak near Kosh-Agach. It was found in 2001 and stands among drawings of a bear, a hunting dog, a deer, a hunter and a horseman.[1]

Three readings have been published, S. G. Klyashtorny and V. Kubarev in 2002, L. Tybykova, I. Nevskaya and M. Erdal in 2012, and Nurdin Useev in 2013, and no two agree. All three find the name Temir Apa, the cry “alas” and an address to a son.[12] Useev takes the text for the record of a funeral sacrifice, because he reads in it the words “we ate” and “sacrificial animal”, but he says himself that several of his readings are uncertain.[13]

Two other texts show the range of the group. A text at Kyzyl-Kabak gives the dead man’s name with the formula “his name as a man is Kut Bermish” and ends with his tribe and land. A text at Tuekta says that the writer will cut his writing into an everlasting bare rock.[14]

The script

The letter forms of Kurgak I are close to those of the Yenisei inscriptions. The text does not keep the rule of the script by which a consonant has one sign for words with back vowels and another for words with front vowels, and some other Altai texts break it too.[15] Single signs of the alphabet of the South Yenisei inscriptions occur in some Altai texts, which has been taken as a sign that the writers knew that alphabet.[16]

Two views give the Altai a place in the history of the script. According to D. D. Vasilyev, the Altai and Sayan texts show an archaic form of the runiform script that came before the Orkhon script; see the debate on the origin of the script.[17] According to a second view, the script reached the Tian Shan by way of the Altai, because the signs of the Kyrgyz stones are closest to those of the Altai stones; see the inscriptions of Talas and the Tian Shan.[7]

Reliability

The Altai texts show the runiform script in use on rock in the mountains of the Altai, far from the Orkhon valley. Without a date for any text they cannot say when the script came there or who used it.

References

  1. ^ a b c d Useev 2013, p. 102
  2. ^ a b Nevskaya 2012, p. 39–40
  3. ^ Vasilyev 1993, p. 91–97; 101–118; Useev 2013, p. 91–97; 101–118
  4. ^ Karaman Dezember 2021, p. 34–35
  5. ^ Useev 2013, p. 102; 41; Nevskaya 2012, p. 102; 41
  6. ^ Nevskaya 2012, p. 39–41
  7. ^ a b c Karaman Dezember 2021, p. 35
  8. ^ a b c Vasilyev 1993, p. 91
  9. ^ Vasilyev 1993, p. 92–94
  10. ^ Vasilyev 1993, p. 93–94
  11. ^ Vasilyev 1993, p. 93
  12. ^ Useev 2013, p. 103–104
  13. ^ Useev 2013, p. 110–112
  14. ^ Karaman Dezember 2021, p. 38, 44
  15. ^ Useev 2013, p. 103
  16. ^ Kızlasov 1990, p. 129–130
  17. ^ Vasilʼev 1993, p. 64–66

Sources

Literature

  • Dimitri D. Vasilyev, Dağlık Altaylardaki Kalbak-Taş Mabedinin Göktürk Yazıtları (A-47, 48, 49, 50) (1993)
  • Nurdin Useev, Altay Cumhuriyeti Yazıtlarından A 78 (Kurgak I) Yazıtı ya da Eski Türklerde Kurbanlık Yazısı (2013)
  • Ahmet Karaman, Dağlık Altay Yazıtlarında İleri Ögeler (Dezember 2021)
  • Irina Nevskaya, An Old Turkic Inscription Found in the Vicinity of the Village Jabogan of the Republic Altai: Its Paleographic Analisys and Reading (türkisch: Altay Cumhuriyeti Jabogan Kasabası Çevresinde Bulunan Eski Türkçe Bir Yazıt: Metin ve Paleografik İnceleme) (2012)
  • D. D. Vasilʼev, Göktürk Yazı Kültürünün Asya’nın Merkezinden Doğu Avrupa’ya Yolu (1993)
  • Leonid R. Kızlasov; İgor L. Kızlasov, Sayan-Altay Türklerinin Yeni Runik Yazısı (1990)

Related

What links here4

Places
Altai
Sources
Jabogan inscription · Talas and Tian Shan runiform inscriptions · Yenisei inscriptions

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Altai runiform inscriptions.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/altai-runiform-inscriptions/

Last revised: 8 November 2026