Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 47 (4) 2019   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2019.47.4.093-098

Annotation:  A Neanderthal Refugium in the Eastern Adriatic Ushbulak—A New Stratifi ed Upper Paleolithic Site in Northeastern Kazakhstan Archaeological Findings on Suchu Island (Excavation Area I, 1975) Burial with a Chariot at the Tabyldy Cemetery, Central Kazakhstan Objects of Portable Art from a Bronze Age Cemetery at Tourist-2 The Use of 3D-Modeling for Reconstructing the Appearance and Function of Non-Utilitarian Items (the Ceramic Protomes of Horses from Late Bronze to Early Iron Age Sites in the Southern Taiga Zone of Si “Portrait” Medallions from the Kazym Hoard A Runic Inscription at Sarykoby (Southeastern Altai) The Ussuriysk Tortoise—A 13th Century Jurchen Monument Turkic Inscriptions in Cyrillic on 14th–15th Century Eastern European Lithic Artifacts The Topography of Ritual Buildings in Villages of the Tobolsk Governorate (Late 19th to Early 20th C Mesolithic Human Teeth from Zamostye-2, Moscow Region The Physical Anthropology of the Odino People, Western Siberia A Study of Human Bones from a Dwelling at Ust-Voikar, in the Subarctic Zone of Western Siberia   

A Runic Inscription at Sarykoby (Southeastern Altai)

M. Erdal¹ and G.V. Kubarev²

¹Goethe University, Senckenberganlage 31, Frankfurt am Main, 60325, Germany

²Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

on of a recently discovered runic inscription found at the petroglyphic site Sarykoby, in the northern spurs of the Saylyugem Range in the Chuya steppe, southeastern Altai. The inscription belongs to a large composition with unusual representations. It consists of two lines with 21 and 13 characters. After discussing several variants of translation, we have selected the most plausible ones. The translation of the inscription with two variants of the second line is as follows: “I have written on the rock, ah! Oh, please speak! Give me luck (or “Going to battle”) - oh - I have written (this)”. The word su/su in the inscription meaning ‘glory, imperial state, greatness, happiness’, is one of the few Mongolian loans in Old Uyghur and possibly in Old Turkic. The Sarykoby inscription is located in an inconspicuous place, the characters are small, and the carving is shallow. This confirms the common view that many runic inscriptions in the Altai are intimate and were not intended for the public eye. At the same time, the Sarykoby inscription invites the readers to a dialog, and possibly carries a call to prayer or blessing. Its content is religious and philosophic in a sense. Perhaps the author believed that the inscription could confer a blessing upon the readers. This makes it very meaningful and unusual in the corpus of runic inscriptions of the Altai.

Keywords: Runic inscription, translation, interpretation, Chuya steppe, southeastern Altai, Old Turkic