Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
  • 400
  • 500
  • 600
  • 700
  • 800
  • 900

The Nalaikh inscription is a short runiform text said to come from Nalaikh, east of Ulaanbaatar.[1] It enters the study of Old Turkic religion through two phrases. One names Tengri as ruler, and the other names Umay as the consort of a ruler.[1] A catalogue of the runiform texts of Mongolia, printed in 1983, lists the same piece as a tile inscription. It adds that the piece is a fake, made later to be sold to tourists.[2] Neither account cites a find report. The two descriptions differ on the kind of object, and they differ on whether it is old. Orkun’s edition, which both accounts cite, settles the kind of object. It prints the piece as a clay tile with four lines of text.[3]

The two accounts

The first account is a study of religious terms in the Old Uyghur texts. It mentions the inscription in a passage on Umay. It calls the piece a stone inscription of four fragmentary lines found near Ulaanbaatar. It says that the piece is also called the Nalaikh inscription, and it puts the piece at about 730.[1] The text is quoted in two phrases only, h(a)n t(ä)ŋri and um(a)y h(a)tun. They are rendered “the ruler Täŋri” and “Umay, the ruler’s wife”.[1] The study sees in them a parallel between rule on earth and rule in Heaven. For the text, it cites the edition of Hüseyin Namık Orkun.[1]

The second account is the catalogue. It numbers the Köktürk-script texts of Mongolia after a Russian list. It sorts them into six groups, and the first group holds the texts of the Göktürk period before 745.[4] The Nalaikh piece stands in the first group as number 13. It is listed as the “tile inscription of Nalaikh, Ulaanbaatar”, with four lines of runiform text and a date that is “estimated” to fall around 730.[2] A remark in brackets says that the piece is a fake made later for sale to tourists. The entry ends with a reference to pages 161–162 of the second volume of Orkun’s edition.[2]

Both accounts give a date of about 730, and the first cites the catalogue’s page for it.[5] The remark on forgery stands on that same page. The study does not mention it.[2]

The edition of Orkun

Orkun prints the piece as the Ulaanbaatar tile inscription.[3] In 1934, he says, a herdsman near a coal mine about fifty kilometres from the city gave a fragment of a clay tile to D. D. Bukinich, who worked for the research committee of the Mongolian People’s Republic. Bukinich sent a copy to Samoylovich, who published it in the same year in the bulletin of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.[3]

The tile is at most 22.5 centimetres across and 10.8 centimetres long, and it is 16 millimetres thick. The letters are about 16 millimetres high.[3] Orkun says that the tile was then in the Institute of Anthropology, Ethnography and Archaeology of the Soviet Academy.[3] It carries four lines of runiform script whose ends cannot be read. At one end are two goats and an arrowhead.[3]

Samoylovich did not know where the text begins. Orkun takes the side with the pictures for the beginning. He points to the Orkhon inscription, where the Kögmen is followed by yer and sub, and to the Ongin stone, which has the phrase sub yer tenri.[3] His reading of the four lines is Kögmen …, ıduk yer suy(?) …, han tenri …, Umay katun …. His Turkish gives “Kögmen”, “sacred land and water”, “Han Tengri” and “Umay katun”. He finds that the spelling resembles that of the Tonyukuk inscription.[3] For him the text shows that the Göktürks thought of Umay as a queen beside the khan of Heaven.[3]

An account of the religion of the Turks and Mongols takes the same four names and reads them without reservation as the names of sacred mountains.[6] It dates the piece to about 730.[7] It does not mention the remark on forgery.

The two phrases

The words are plain Old Turkic. Han is the ruler, the khan. Täŋri is Heaven and the god of Heaven, and the Orkhon monuments use the word Tengri for both.[8] Hatun is katun, the title of a ruler’s wife.[8] Umay is the name of the goddess of birth, which the Kül Tegin inscription uses once, in a comparison.[8]

The Kül Tegin inscription shows the same pairing in a different grammar. Its khan is “like Heaven and born of Heaven”, and its queen mother is “like Umay”. The khan is measured against Tengri, and the katun against Umay.[8] Some scholars take the two comparisons in the Orkhon texts as a pair. In that case the khans are Heaven-like and the katuns Umay-like.[9] If the Nalaikh phrases are genuine, they name the two without comparing. They also give Umay the title katun.

That last point is what the piece would add. In the Orkhon inscriptions, Umay is a standard of comparison for a woman. In the Tonyukuk inscription, she is one of the powers that give help. No title goes with her name.[10] One proposal reads a Yenisei stone from Altın Köl as giving her the title beg, which is a title of rule as well.[11] Two texts that gave Umay a title of rule would be consistent with each other. They would not support each other, because the Altın Köl reading is itself disputed and the Nalaikh piece is not secure.

Authenticity

The remark of the catalogue is the only statement on authenticity in the two accounts. It gives no reason.[2] The catalogue makes the remark in passing, in brackets. The same catalogue still lists the piece by number among the texts of the Göktürk period.[2] The two pages do not show whether the catalogue knew something that the study did not.

Three things would bear on the matter: the edition in which the piece was first printed, a photograph or a squeeze of the object, and its present location. The first is now in hand. Orkun’s edition reports the find of 1934 and the first publication in the same year, and it prints a drawing of the four lines.[3] The remark of the catalogue stands beside that report, and the catalogue does not say how it squares with it. The photograph and the present location are still missing. A fake made for tourists and an ancient tile can look alike in a drawing of four lines.

Date

About 730 is an estimate, and the catalogue words it as such.[2] It would place the piece near the Kül Tegin monument of 732. It would also place it in the years of the Second Khaganate in which the Orkhon stones were cut.[8] Nothing in the accounts says how the estimate was made. The two phrases contain no year or name that could fix it. The date can therefore only rest on the letter forms or on the content, and the accounts do not say which.

Other stones near Nalaikh

The Nalaikh piece is not the monument that stands near the old post-station of Nalaikh. That monument is the Tonyukuk inscription at Bain Tsokto on the upper Tola. It consists of two stones with sixty-two lines, found in 1897.[12] The catalogue lists the two separately, with Tonyukuk as number 2 and Nalaikh as number 13.[2] In the counsellor’s speech before the battle, the Tonyukuk stones name Tengri, Umay and the sacred Earth-and-Water together.[12] The Nalaikh piece is a different and far shorter text.[2]

Reliability

Suppose the piece is what the first account takes it for. Then it is a short text from the years of the Second Khaganate that puts Tengri and Umay side by side as ruler and consort. Suppose instead that it is what the catalogue says. Then it is a modern object with an old script. It belongs to the history of the script’s reception and not to the history of Tengrism.

Until the tile itself is examined, or a photograph is produced, the Nalaikh text contains no statement about Umay. What is known of her in the age of the khaganates rests on the Kül Tegin and Tonyukuk monuments and on the stones of the Yenisei. Those texts stand without it.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wilkens 2024, p. 80
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Sertkaya 1983, p. 75
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Orkun 1994, p. 353–354
  4. ^ Sertkaya 1983, p. 71–72
  5. ^ Wilkens 2024, p. 80; 75; Sertkaya 1983, p. 80; 75
  6. ^ Roux 1994, p. 113
  7. ^ Roux 1994, p. 125
  8. ^ a b c d e Kül Tegin inscription
  9. ^ Davletov 2025, p. 85
  10. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tonyukuk inscription
  11. ^ Davletov 2025, p. 88
  12. ^ a b Tonyukuk inscription

Sources

Literature

  • Jens Wilkens (trans. Celalettin Bulut Bostan), Uygur Budizmi ve Manihaizm ile Yerel Dinlerin Etkisi: Dinî Terminoloji Örneği (2024)
  • Osman Fikri Sertkaya, Köl Tigin’in Ölümünün 1250. Yıl Dönümü Dolayısı ile Moğolistan Halk Cumhuriyeti’ndeki Köktürk Harfli Metinler Üzerinde Yapılan Arkeolojik ve Filolojik Çalışmalara Toplu Bir Bakış (1983)
  • Nükhet Okutan Davletov, Timur B. Davletov, Altın Köl I (E 28) Yazıtında Geçen Umay Beg İfadesi Üzerine (2025)
  • Hüseyin Namık Orkun, Eski Türk Yazıtları (1994)
  • Jean-Paul Roux, Türklerin ve Moğolların Eski Dini (1994)

Related

What links here1

Sources
Altın Köl Inscriptions

Cite this article

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

Last revised: 8 November 2026