Dynastic History | Khöshöö Tsaidam — The Khaganate Wrote Its Own Account, and Signed It

Kül Tegin died on 27 February 731 — the date comes from the memorial texts and the Chinese records that agree with them — and was buried that November. The stone raised over his memorial the following year is the reason the Second Turkic Khaganate can be read in its own words rather than only in someone else's.

Two texts share the monument. One is in Chinese. The other is in Old Turkic, cut in the runiform script, and the inscription names its author: Yollıg Tegin, of the ruling house, who states that he wrote it. It is the earliest extended text known in any Turkic language, and it is not a record kept for posterity. It is an argument addressed to a named audience. The Türk people are told, in the second person, what went wrong: that the Tang court "give in abundance gold, silver, millet, and silk", that it deals in "ingratiating words" and holds "enervating riches", and that Türk nobles who accepted Chinese titles helped bring destruction on their own kagans. The Chinese-language face of the same stone was composed by a different court, for different readers.

Bilge Khagan, Kül Tegin's brother, died on 25 November 734; his memorial stone went up in 735. Nikolai Yadrintsev's expedition recorded both in 1889, and the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen worked out the script in 1893.

The complexes stand at Khashaat in Arkhangai, inside the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape that UNESCO inscribed in 2004. The stelae are now roofed, in the Göktürk Museum built beside them; the excavated foundations and the line of balbal stones remain outside on the grass.

📸 Cover: The Kül Tegin stele in the on-site museum, Betta27, public domain via Wikimedia Commons