Orkhon script
From Freepedia
The Orkhon script is the earliest known Turkic alphabet. The script was discovered in a 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 of the 16th century.
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.
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Corpus
Image:Kyzyl orkhon inscription.jpg The inscription corpus consists of two monuments which were erected in the Orkhon Valley between 732 and 735 in honour of two Kokturk princes named Kul and Bilge, as well as inscriptions on slabs scattered in the wider area.
See Also
External link
References
- György Kara, Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages. In Daniels and *Bright, eds., The World's Writing Systems, 1996.
