A Runic Inscription at Sarykoby (Southeastern Altai)
A Runic Inscription at Sarykoby (Southeastern Altai)
DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2019.47.4.093-098
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.
