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Orkh, 175
The Old Turkic script (also known as variously Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script) is the alphabet used by the Göktürk and other early Turkic Khanates during the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language.[1]
The script is named after the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia where early 8th-century inscriptions were discovered in an 1889 expedition by Nikolay Yadrintsev.[2] These Orkhon inscriptions were published by Vasily Radlov and deciphered by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893.
The discovery of short runic inscriptions on a great number of articles for common personal use proves that the knowledge and use of the runic script was generally spread among the old Turkic tribes.[3]
It was later used by the Uyghur Empire. Additionally, a Yenisei variant is known from 9th-century Kyrgyz inscriptions, and it has likely cousins in the Talas Valley of Turkestan and the Old Hungarian script of the 10th century. The alphabet was usually written from right to left.
Further Turkic Nestorian manuscripts, which have the same "rune-like" duct[4] as the Old Turkic script, have been found, especially in the oasis of Turfan and in the fortress of Miran.[5][6][7]
Thomsen described the script as "Turkish runes", and it is still occasionally described as "runic" or "runiform" by comparison to the Old Germanic alphabet used for epigraphy during roughly the same period.
The origins of the Turkic scripts are uncertain. The initial guesses were based on visual, external resemblances of the Turkic runiform letters with the Gothic runes or with Greek, Etruscan and Anatolian letters, suggesting an Indo-European alphabet resembling Semitic Phoenician, Gothic, Phoenician-based Greek, etc., letters.[8] According to V. Thomsen, derives the Orkhon script from variants of the Aramaic alphabet, in particular via the Pahlavi and Sogdian alphabets or possibly via Kharosthi, as suggested by János Harmatta.[9]
The oldest inscription whose characters resemble the Old Turkic script, possibly representing an intermediate step in the evolution of the script from Aramaic, was found near the Issyk River in Kazakhstan and is known as the Issyk inscription.[10][11] According to Kazakh archaeologist Kimal Akishev, the inscription found in Issyk Kurgan could be an archaic version of Göktürk alphabet.[12][13] The inscription itself could be written in an Iranian language, reflecting a Saka dialect spoken by the Kushans.[9]
Aside from derivation from tamgas, an alternate possible derivation from Chinese script was suggested by V. Thomsen in 1893. Turkic inscriptions dated earlier than the Orkhon inscriptions used about 150 symbols, which may suggest that tamgas first imitated Chinese script and then gradually refined into an alphabet.
It is also very probable that some prototypes of Ancient Turkic runes descend from primeval Turkic graphic logograms.[14][15] At the same time, the Turkic runic alphabet represents a very rich and expressly developed independent graphic system. However, the paleographic analysis of the Ancient Turkic runes, in turn, leads to a very early forming date for the Turkic runic alphabet in Southern Siberia and Jeti-Su, not later than the middle of the 1st millennium BC.[15]
Thomsen (1893) connected the script to the reports of Chinese account (Shiji, vol. 110) from a 2nd-century BC Chinese Yan renegade and dignitary named Zhonghang Yue (Chinese: 中行说; pinyin: Zhōngháng Yuè) who
The same sources tell that when the Xiongnu noted down something or transmitted a message, they made cuts on a piece of wood (ko-mu); they also mention a "Hu script". At Noin-Ula and other Hun burial sites in Mongolia and regions north of Lake Baikal, the artifacts displayed over twenty carved characters. Most of these characters are either identical or very similar to the letters of the Turkic Orkhon script.[16]
Part of the Zhou Shu, dating to the 5th century, mentions that the Turks did not have a way to keep records, implying that the Old Turkic alphabet may not have existed yet.
The inscription corpus consists of two monuments which were erected in the Orkhon Valley between 732 and 735 in honour of the Göktürk prince Kül Tigin and his brother the emperor Bilge Kağan, as well as inscriptions on slabs scattered in the wider area. The script was also used to write down the epic poetry of the Turkic people.[3]
The website of the Language Committee of Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan lists 54 inscriptions from the Orkhon area, 106 from the Yenisei area, 15 from the Talas area, and 78 from the Altai area. There are also a handful of short inscriptions found on archaeological artefacts, including a number of bronze mirrors.
The Orkhon monuments are the oldest known examples of Turkic writing; they are inscribed on obelisks and have been dated to 732 (for that relating to Kül Tigin), and to 735 (for that relating to Bilge Kağan. The Tonyukuk inscription, a monument situated somewhat further east, is slightly earlier, dating to c. 722.
Other inscriptions using the same script are found in Mongolia, Siberia, and Xinjiang. They relate in epic language the legendary origins of the Turks, the golden age of their history, their subjugation by the Chinese, and their liberation by Bilge.
Old Turkic being a synharmonic language, a number of consonant signs are divided into two "synharmonic sets", one for front vowels and the other for back vowels. Such vowels can be taken as intrinsic to the consonant sign, giving the Old Turkic alphabet an aspect of an abugida script. In these cases, it is customary to use superscript numerals ¹ and ² to mark consonant signs used with back and front vowels, respectively. This convention was introduced by Thomsen (1893), and followed by Gabain (1941), Malov (1951) and Tekin (1968).
A word separator : () is sometimes used.
A reading example (right to left): transliterated t²ṅr²i, this spells the name of the Turkic sky god, Tengri (/teŋri/).
Variants of the script were found from Mongolia and Xinjiang in the east to the Balkans in the west. The preserved inscriptions were dated to between the 8th and 10th centuries.
These alphabets are divided into four groups by Kyzlasov (1994)[22]
The Asiatic group is further divided into three related alphabets:
The Eurasiatic group is further divided into five related alphabets:
A number of alphabets are incompletely collected due to the limitations of the extant inscriptions. Evidence in the study of the Turkic scripts includes Turkic-Chinese bilingual inscriptions, contemporaneous Turkic inscriptions in the Greek alphabet, literal translations into Slavic languages, and paper fragments with Turkic cursive writing from religion, Manichaeism, Buddhist, and legal subjects of the 8th to 10th centuries found in Xinjiang.
Oldest known Turkic alphabet listings, Rjukoku and Toyok manuscripts. Toyok manuscript transliterates Turkic alphabet into Uyghur alphabet. Per I. L. Kyzlasov, "Runic Scripts of Eurasian Steppes", Moscow, Eastern Literature, 1994, ISBN 5-02-017741-5.
The Unicode block for Old Turkic is U+10C00–U+10C4F. It was added to the Unicode standard in October 2009, with the release of version 5.2. It includes separate "Orkhon" and "Yenisei" variants of individual characters.
Since Windows 8 Unicode Old Turkic writing support was added in the Segoe UI Symbol font.
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