drawing of the Issyk inscription

The Issyk kurgan, in south-eastern Kazakhstan, less than 20 km east from the Talgar alluvial fan, near Issyk, was discovered in 1969. It is dated to the 4th or 3rd century BC (Hall 1997), situated in what was at the time eastern Scythia, just north of Sogdiana. Image File history File links Issyk_inscription. ... Image File history File links Issyk_inscription. ... Kurgan is a Türkic word for tumulus, burial mound or barrow, heaped over a burial chamber, or a kurgan cenotaph. ... Talgar is a region of Almaty Province, southeastern Kazakhstan. ... Issyk is a town in the Talgar region of Kazakhstan, some 70 km east of Almaty. ... 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Sogdiana (Sug`ud,Sug`diyona -Uzbek, Sughd - Tajik, Sugdiane, Old Persian Sughuda, Persian:سغد, Chinese: Kang-Kü) ancient civilization of Iranian peoples, then was a province of the Achaemenian Empire, the eighteenth in the list in the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great (i. ...

It contained a skeleton of uncertain sex, interred with warrior's equipment, variously dubbed "golden man" or "golden princess", and with rich funerary goods, including 4,000 gold ornaments. A notable item is a silver cup bearing an inscription.

The Issyk inscription is in an unidentified script and an unidentified language. The script is at least superficially similar to the various runic and runeiform scripts used in more recent times by Turkic, Hungarian and Germanic peoples, but it is unclear if there is any link between the Issyk inscription and any of those later scripts. Others believe the Issyk inscription is related to the Kharosthī script, used in India and central Asia from around the 4th century BC to the 3rd century AD, although the Issyk script is not visually similar to the Kharosthi script. The Issyk inscription is probably too short for any identification of the language to gain wide acceptance, unless more examples are found.

Janos Harmatta (1999) has attempted a translation based on a hypothesis that the script is Kharosthi and the language is a branch of Indo-Iranian, which he names Khotanese Saka: "The vessel should hold wine of grapes, added cooked food, so much, to the mortal, then added cooked fresh butter on." (compare Nestor's Cup and Duenos inscription for other ancient inscriptions on vessels that concern the vessel itself). ... The term Cup of Nestor or Nestors Cup can refer to: An object described in Homers Iliad, An 8th century BCE drinking vessel found at Pithikoussai, which bears a famous inscription calling itself Nestors cup. ... The Duenos inscription, as recorded by Heinrich Dressel. ...

Altay Amonjolov (2003) has attemted a translation based on a hypothesis that the script and language are Proto-Turkic and ancestral to the 8th century Turkic Orkhon script: "Senior brother, this hearth is for you. Stranger, kneel! Progenies shall have food." The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China. ... Orkhon script The Orkhon script is the earliest known Turkic alphabet. ...

References

• A. Amanjolov "History and Theory of Ancient Turkic Script", Almaty, "Mektep", 2003, pp. 218-219, ISBN 9965-16-204-2
• Hall, Mark E. Towards an absolute chronology for the Iron Age of Inner Asia. Antiquity 71 (1997): 863-874.
• Harmatta, Janos. History of Civilization of Central Asia. Volume 2, Motilal Banarsidass (1999), ISBN 8120814088, p. 421 [1][2]

External links

• http://www.kz/usr/ale/eng/intro4.html
• http://www.kz/usr/ale/eng/album6.html
• http://home.earthlink.net/~ekerilaz/princess.html