Orkhon script

The Orkhon script is the earliest known Turkic alphabet. The script was discovered in an 1889 expedition to the Orkhon Valley monuments in Mongolia, which date from the early 8th century. It is thought that the script was inspired by non-cursive Sogdian. It was later used by the Uyghur Empire; a "Yenisei" variant is known from 9th-century Kirghiz inscriptions, and it has likely cousins in the Talas Valley of Turkestan and perhaps the Hungarian Szekler script (Székely script).

The Orkhon Valley inscriptions were discovered by Nikolay Yadrintsev's expedition in 1889, published by Vasily Radlov and deciphered by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893. The script is very similar to that on monuments left by Tu-jue (突厥 pinyin tú jué) in China during the Tang Dynasty.

The Orkhon script is sometimes called "runiform" because its external similarity to the runic alphabet. The similarity in form is likely due to the fact that both scripts were carved in stone and wood rather than written, though Orkhon includes curved shapes that runes lack.

Corpus

The inscription corpus consists of two monuments which were erected in the Orkhon Valley between 732 and 735 in honour of the two Kokturk princes Kul Tigin and Bilge Khan, as well as inscriptions on slabs scattered in the wider area.

The Orkhon monuments are the oldest known examples of Turkish writings; they are inscribed on obelisks and have been dated to 720 (for the obelisk relating to Tonyukuk), to 732 (for that relating to Kültigin), and to 735 (for that relating to Bilge Kagan).

External links

Orkhon Alphabet page from Omniglot
http://www.turkicworld.org/
http://www.tonyukuk.net/tongiris.htm

References

György Kara, Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages. In Daniels and *Bright, eds., The World's Writing Systems, 1996.

Alphabetic writing systems | Runiform scripts | History of China | Inscriptions | Gokturks

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Corpus

See also

External links

References