The Elegest inscription is a Yenisei Kyrgyz inscription. It was found by J. R. Aspelin in 1888 on the left bank of the river Elegest, Tuva. [1]
Old Turkic original text:
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Old Turkic original text:
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The phrase "𐰚𐰇𐰼𐱅 𐰠𐰴𐰣" in the first sentence of the fifth line could be either read as "Kört äl kan" "Kürt el kan", literally meaning "the inn of the Kurdish province". This caused some researchers to believe in theories speculating the Turkic origin of Kurds. Later, some local and foreign researchers working on Turkic history accepted this reading and interpretation, and came to the possibility that the Kurds once had a relation with Turkic tribes. [3]
Kul Tigin was a general and a prince of the Second Turkic Khaganate.
The Old Turkic script was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Turkic language.
Turkish is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 90 to 100 million speakers. It is the national language of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. Significant smaller groups of Turkish speakers also exist in Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Greece, Cyprus, other parts of Europe, the South Caucasus, and some parts of Central Asia, Iraq, and Syria. Turkish is the 18th most spoken language in the world.
The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic languages originated in a region of East Asia spanning from Mongolia to Northwest China, where Proto-Turkic is thought to have been spoken, from where they expanded to Central Asia and farther west during the first millennium. They are characterized as a dialect continuum.
Tonyukuk was the baga-tarkhan and adviser of four successive Göktürk khagans – Ilterish Qaghan, Qapaghan Qaghan, Inel Qaghan and Bilge Qaghan. He conducted victorious campaigns against various Turkic and non-Turkic steppe peoples, such as Tölis, Xueyantuo, Toquz Oguz, Yenisei Kyrgyz, Kurykans, Thirty Tatar, Khitan and Tatabi as well as the Tang dynasty. He was described as a kingmaker by historians such as E. P. Thompson and Peter Benjamin Golden.
The Old Hungarian script or Hungarian runes is an alphabetic writing system used for writing the Hungarian language. Modern Hungarian is written using the Latin-based Hungarian alphabet. The term "old" refers to the historical priority of the script compared with the Latin-based one. The Old Hungarian script is a child system of the Old Turkic alphabet.
Turkology is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative context. This includes ethnic groups from the Sakha in East Siberia to the Turks in the Balkans and the Gagauz in Moldova.
Bulgar is an extinct Oghuric Turkic language spoken by the Bulgars.
Altai is a set of Turkic languages, which are in turn hypothesized by some to be a set of Altaic languages spoken officially in the Altai Republic, Russia. The standard vocabulary is based on the Southern Altai language, though it's also taught to and used by speakers of the Northern Altai language as well. Gorno–Altai refers to a subgroup of languages in the Altai Mountains.The languages were called Oyrot (ойрот) prior to 1948.
The Azerbaijani alphabet has three versions which includes the Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic alphabets.
The Meroitic script consists of two alphasyllabic scripts developed to write the Meroitic language at the beginning of the Meroitic Period of the Kingdom of Kush. The two scripts are Meroitic Cursive, derived from Demotic Egyptian, and Meroitic Hieroglyphs, derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Meroitic Cursive is the most widely attested script, comprising ~90% of all inscriptions, and antedates, by a century or more, the earliest, surviving Meroitic hieroglyphic inscription. Greek historian Diodorus Siculus described the two scripts in his Bibliotheca historica, Book III (Africa), Chapter 4. The last known Meroitic inscription is the Meroitic Cursive inscription of the Blemmye king, Kharamadoye, from a column in the Temple of Kalabsha, which has recently been re-dated to AD 410/ 450 of the 5th century. Before the Meroitic Period, Egyptian hieroglyphs were used to write Kushite names and lexical items.
Old Turkic is the earliest attested form of the Common Turkic languages, first found in Second Turkic Khaganate then in Uyghur Khaganate inscriptions. In marked contrast to Middle Turkic, the geographic extent of (East) Old Turkic is rather confined, being limited mainly to East Turkistan and Mongolia. In terms of the datability of extant written sources, the period of Old Turkic can be dated from slightly before 720 AD to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. Orkhon Turkic and Old Uyghur are considered to be dialects of East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic being the earliest attested dialect of (East) Old Turkic. There is a difference of opinion among linguists with regard to Karakhanid Turkic, some classify it as another dialect of East Old Turkic, while others prefer to include Karakhanid among Middle Turkic languages; nonetheless, Karakhanid is extremely close to Old Uyghur so much so that a single grammatical description will fit both of them. East Old Turkic and West Old Turkic together comprise the Old Turkic proper. East Old Turkic is the oldest attested member of the Siberian Turkic branch of Turkic languages, and several of its now-archaic grammatical as well as lexical features are extant in the modern Yellow Uyghur, Lop Nur Uyghur and Khalaj ; Khalaj, for instance, has (surprisingly) retained a considerable number of archaic Old Turkic words despite forming a language island within Central Iran and being heavily influenced by Persian. Old Uyghur is not a direct ancestor of the Modern Standard Uyghur language ; the contemporaneous ancestor of Modern Uyghur was one of the Middle Turkic languages, later giving rise to Chagatai literary language.
Yami Qaghan, personal name Ashina Rangan, at one point known as Tolis Qaghan and later El Ïduk Jamï(r) Qağan was the first qaghan of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate.
The Orkhon inscriptions (also known as the Orhon inscriptions, Orhun inscriptions, Khöshöö Tsaidam monuments, or Kul Tigin steles are two memorial installations erected by the Göktürks written in the Old Turkic alphabet in the early 8th century in the Orkhon Valley in what is modern-day Mongolia. They were erected in honor of two Turkic princes, Kul Tigin and his brother Bilge Khagan.
Irk Bitig or Irq Bitig, known as the Book of Omens or Book of Divination in English, is a 9th-century manuscript book on divination that was discovered in the "Library Cave" of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China, by Aurel Stein in 1907, and is now in the collection of the British Library in London, England. The book is written in Old Turkic using the Old Turkic script ; it is the only known complete manuscript text written in the Old Turkic script. It is also an important source for early Turkic mythology.
The Buyla inscription is a 9-word, 56-character inscription written in the Greek alphabet but in a non-Greek language. It is found on a golden buckled bowl or cup which is among the pieces of the Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós which are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The bowl is 12 cm in diameter and weighs 212 g, and has a handle or buckle, perhaps for hanging on a belt. The inscription is found around the outside of a circular design in the middle of the bowl. In the place where the inscription begins and ends, there is a cross. The inscription reads: ΒΟΥΗΛΑ·ΖΟΑΠΑΝ·ΤΕϹΗ·ΔΥΓΕΤΟΙΓΗ·ΒΟΥΤΑΟΥΛ·ΖΩΑΠΑΝ·ΤΑΓΡΟΓΗ·ΗΤΖΙΓΗ·ΤΑΙϹΗ.
Orkhon Turkic, is the first stage of Old Turkic, known as the oldest Turkic literary language preceding Old Uyghur. It is generally used for the language in which the Orkhon and Yenisei inscriptions are written.
The Ongin inscription was discovered in 1891 in Mongolia near the Ongi River, 160 km south of the Orkhon inscriptions and 402 km south-west of the Tonyukuk inscriptions. It was erected in honor of El Etmish Yabgu. Line 12 makes it clear that the author of the inscription erected a memorial to his father. According to Gerard Clauson, it must have been erected between 716 and 735, during the reign of Bilge Qaghan. According to Ercilasun it was erected in 719 or 720.
Uyuk-Tarlak II is an inscription erected by Yenisei Kyrgyz. It was found by Aspelin in 1888 on a slope two kilometres away from the river Tarlak, Tuva. The stone was transported to the Minusinsk Museum of Regional History in 1916 and catalogued under the number 20. It measures 183 x 33 centimetres.
Mehmet Talât Tekin was a Turkish linguist, Turkologist, researcher and writer who made important contributions to Turkology, the study of Old Turkic inscriptions, and Altaistics.