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The first Bulgar state, Danube Bulgaria, lasted from 681 to 1018.[1] Its sites have given back a large number of marks that look like runic letters. They stand on the stone blocks of fortresses and palaces, on bricks, pottery, rock faces and in caves.[2] They are not the Old Turkic script of the Orkhon stones, and the Bulgarian studies use “runic” in a wide sense for marks that resemble runes.[3]

The corpus

More than a thousand single marks have been counted at Pliska, Madara, Preslav, Silistra and other sites, among them Ravna and Černoglavci. About thirty of them recur often and unchanged. The rest are variants. More than three hundred different combinations of three, four or more signs are known.[2] Marks have also been found further away, in Romania and in Montenegro (Šudikova), and on the treasure of Nagyszentmiklós.[4]

The bulk of the marks date from the first half of the ninth century, above all from the reign of Omurtag, 814 to 831.[4] They run on to 1018.[4]

Whether the marks are letters, property marks or magic signs is not settled.[5] The archaeologist who surveys them declines to read them. In spite of the efforts of scholars, the writing of the Bulgar lands remains undeciphered.[3]

The commonest sign

The commonest sign is a Y between two upright strokes. The Bulgarian literature counts 49 variants of it and ten combinations. Seven medallions bear it, from Preslav (two), Silistra, Sredishte, Apiariya, Krasen and Okorsh. It also stands on a lead seal from Preslav, on both sides. It was in use for more than three centuries.[6]

Five interpretations of it have been proposed, and others have rejected each of them. The first takes the sign for the name of the god, Tangra, the Bulgar form of Tengri. The second reads Greek letters that mean “great”, a title found in the khan inscriptions. The third sees a cryptogram for the name of Jesus. The fourth reads “Supreme God”. The fifth takes it for the sign of the ruling house, of Boris or of Simeon. Some readers add a protective function.[6]

The Tengri interpretation is one of five. The sign therefore cannot stand as proof of a cult of Tengri among the Bulgar rulers.

The rosette of Pliska

A seven-armed bronze rosette from Pliska carries signs in the centre and two signs on each arm. It has been taken for a cavalry badge, for a charm of the sun, the moon and the five planets, for a sacred calendar and for a seal in Greek vowels that stand for the planets.[7]

Attributions

Many researchers derive the Bulgar signs from the Old Turkic runiform script. Tryjarski, by contrast, takes the runic texts of Pliska, Byala, Murfatlar and Šudikova for Greek texts, written in signs of Asian origin that the Protobulgars brought with them.[8] The archaeologist who surveys the marks follows Kızlasov, who holds the Eurasian runiform writing to be supra-ethnic, with local graphic variants.[3]

A different study reads all runiform inscriptions of the Danube, the Volga, the Don and the North Caucasus as monuments of dialects of Bulgar.[9] Runiform inscriptions found in the Khazar lands and further west have been ascribed to the Khazars, the Avars, the Pechenegs and the Bulgars, and no reading proposed for them has been satisfactory.[10] See also the inscriptions of Murfatlar, where Cyrillic, Greek and Old Bulgar writing stand beside the signs, and the inscriptions of the Khazar lands.

References

  1. ^ Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 175
  2. ^ a b Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 176–177
  3. ^ a b c Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 180
  4. ^ a b c Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 176
  5. ^ Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 177, 179–180
  6. ^ a b Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 179–180
  7. ^ Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 178–179
  8. ^ Dončeva-Petkova 2000, p. 178
  9. ^ Bayçorov 1990, p. 15–16
  10. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 4

Sources

Literature

  • Lüdmila Dončeva-Petkova, Orta Çağ Bulgaristanı'ndan Runik İşaretler ve Birleşmeler (2000)
  • Soslanbek Y. Bayçorov, Avrupa’nın Göktürk Harfli Eski Anıtları. Göktürk Harfli Eski Yazının Kuzey Kafkasya, Volga-Don ve Tuna Bölgeleriyle İlişkisi (1990)
  • Svetlana Venelinova Kavrikova, Murfatlar ve Nad Sent Mikloş Yazıtlarının Paleografik Karakteristiği (2000)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)

Articles resting on this source 1

Oghur Turkic

Related

What links here5

Places
Pliska
Peoples
Bulgars
Languages
Oghur Turkic
Sources
Murfatlar inscriptions · Runiform inscriptions of the Khazar lands

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Protobulgarian sign corpus.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/protobulgarian-sign-corpus/

Last revised: 8 November 2026