About the Republican Program on Preservation and Development of the Altai Language and the project "The cataloguing and documentation of the runic inscriptions of the Altai Republic"

Research on Old Turkic runic inscriptions in the Republic Altai was carried out by the authors of this website first in the framework of the Republican Program on Preservation and Development of the Altai Language (2003-2006) and later in the framework of the project "The cataloguing and documentation of the runic inscriptions of the Altai Republic" founded by the DFG and the RFHR (2007-2009 and 2012-2013). Between 2009 and 2012 the research was carried out by Larisa Tybykova and Irina Nevskaya on their own costs.

Since 2003 and till 2013, annual expeditions are organized by L. N. Tybykova to serve the documentation of inscriptions. In the years 2003-2006, these took place within the framework of the Republican Program on Preservation and Development of the Altai Language, between 2007 and 2013 within the framework of a Russian-German international project as part of a cooperation between the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Russian Foundation of Fundamental Research (RFFR) (Tybykova, Nevskaya 2008, 2009). The cataloguing and documentation of the runic inscriptions of the Altai Republic was urgent not only in itself, but also due to the intensive development of the Altai Republic as a recreational center for the whole of Russia and road constructions connected with this endeavor. The documentation had to be done with the help of modern methods; their subsequent monitoring based on this documentation was necessary. It was important to create a database in order to preserve these inscriptions and popularize them. Until quite recently, the Altai Republic had no such database. Accordingly, it was impossible to prevent the destruction of inscriptions during road construction or other agricultural or industrial activities, or the "privatization" of this cultural heritage of the Altai by certain people. Thanks to recent advances in Old Turkic research, it also became possible to reach more solid interpretations of the inscriptions.

The first attempt to collect the data on the discovered inscriptions of Altai was the Svod (List) of Old Turkic Runic Monuments of the Altai Mountains (Kočeev 2006) written by V. A. Kočeev, a participant of the expeditions in our 2003-2006 project who made a very important contribution to our work by showing us some inscriptions he knew. His publication contains data about the approximate location of some known monuments discovered till 2006, the history of their discovery and study, and the author's copies of some written monuments. Though the Svod has a number of inaccuracies, it gives a general idea about a number of inscriptions and sums up the long-term research of the author on gathering data on the inscriptions of the Altai Republic, some of which he found himself, and some of which he rediscovered after they had been lost.

In the beginning of the 21^st century, search for further inscriptions was continued also by archeologists and regional specialists. A breakthrough in research on Altai runic inscriptions on steles was made thanks to V. D. Kubarev and G. V. Kubarev, archeologists of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. Stele epitaphs in the Altai Mountains cause great interest among scholars, and until now such steles have been found only on the banks of the Bar-Burgazy River of the Koš-Agač district.

The stele Kyzyl-Kabak I was located on the right bank of the Bar-Burgazy River at the foot of the rock Kyzyl-Kabak, 1.5-2 km to the east of the inscriptions Bar-Burgazy I and II. The location of the stele is on the first terrace-plateau of the rock Kyzyl-Kabak above the bed of the river Bar-Burgazy. In the western part of the plateau, the archeologist V. D. Kubarev discovered fragments of slate plates with runic signs. From the stele there remained 4 big and 6 small fragments. The stele of the Bronze Age was used again during the early Middle Ages for the purpose of inscribing an epitaph, and later was destroyed. The stele is preserved in the museum of the Kokoria village of the Koš-Agač district; it was put together using the discovered fragments (Kljaštornyj & Kubarev 2002: 80).

Fragments of another stele with an inscription (Kyzyl-Kabak II) were found by V. D. Kubarev on the right bank of the Bar-Burgazy river, also at the foot of the rock Kyzyl-Kabak, 130 m to the south of the basis of the first stele. It was reconstructed by Kubarev from its fragments; apparently, it was destroyed long ago. On one of its sides there is a runic inscription written with large signs. The inscription consists of two lines; it is very fragmentary and badly preserved. Kyzyl-Kabak I and II are among the rare Altai inscriptions which have runic signs with the height of up to 7 cm; this clearly reminds us of the epitaph steles of the Tyva area bordering on the Koš-Agač district.

One of the largest inscriptions containing a considerable number of runes (85 runes) is an epitaphic inscription on a rock which is located on the edge of a mountain ridge of the Kurgak mountain in the Koš-Agač district. It was discovered by V. D. Kubarev and G. V. Kubarev in 2001 (Kubarev & Kubarev 2001). On the rock surface to the right of this inscription, as well as under the line of writing, there is a hunting scene depicting a horseman with a dog, who are chasing a deer and a bear, and an archer waiting for them with an arrow. This scene gives an idea about simultaneity and composite unity of the graffiti scene and the inscription. The second inscription on the Kurgak mountain was found in 2005 by O. V. Majčikov, a participant of one of the expeditions headed by L. N. Tybykova. This inscription is situated about 70-80 m below the inscription Kurgak I.

In 2001, it became known that B. H. Kadikov copied but did not publish two inscriptions in the area of Sakyjla-Koby, 1.5 km from the village Belyj-Boom. The inscriptions were found by Valerij Ačapov who showed them to our expedition in 2005. We studied them in 2005 and 2006.

During our expedition in 2003, its participant A. T. Tarbanaev discovered a new inscription, Bičiktu-Boom IX, in the vicinity of the Bičiktu-Boom village in the northeastern part of the Bičiktu-Boom mountain on the low part of a small rock. Above the inscription Bičiktu Boom III, we have also documented a hardly visible inscription, Bičiktu-Boom X, which was found by I. L. Kyzlasov in 2001.

A stone with a well preserved runic inscription consisting of 6 lines proved to be one of the largest Altai inscriptions and one the most remarkable discoveries in 2004. Information about this stone was given by Evgenij Šatin, an inhabitant of the Jabogan village of the Ust'-Kan district, who learnt about the existence of this inscribed stone from his father. The father found this stone when he was a little boy on the northwest end of the village and incised under the inscription his name and surname, Šatin Erke, the name of the village and the year 1927, the date he found it. The stone was brought to the city of Gorno-Altajsk and L. N. Tybykova and I. A. Nevskaya presented it to the National Museum of the Altai Republic named after A. V. Anoxin.

Some runes carved on the stone from the Jabogan village have certain features which have not been yet documented in any of the research known to us. The inscription consists of 6 lines and 113 runes. For today, it is the largest runic text found in Altai. The vicinity of the village Nižnij Inegen turns out to be a very promising area in terms of Old Turkic written monuments. According to the results of archeological research, it is rich in ancient monuments, particularly in rock paintings of the Scythian and Old Turkic ages. In the autumn of 2005,E. P. Matočkin found two plates with petroglyphs there. The right plate was almost completely under the ground, except for a small corner on which there were a few runic signs. Other signs were under the soil and could not be seen. He dug the stone out of the earth and cleaned it. It appeared that there are two runic inscriptions along with a few petroglyphs. For identification, the plate was brought in the winter of 2006 to the Anoxin Museum, where it was studied by L. N. Tybykova and I. A. Nevskaya. On this plate there are, among the petroglyphs, two inscriptions made by two different persons. The inscriptions are in very bad condition and are hardly visible, but we have managed to discern 9 runes in the inscription on the bottom part of the stone and 10 runes in the second inscription located in the middle of the stone (Matočkin, Tybykova, Nevskaya, & Erdal 2010).

2006 was marked by new findings. An inscription containing three lines written in the lower part of a southeastern low ridge near the necropolis of the Tuekta village on a separate, inclined stone sticking out of the earth was discovered by I. L. Kyzlasov's expedition in the beginning of July 2006. In 2009, as a result of a road construction, the unique stone with this inscription proved to be under the threat of disappearance; at our insistence it was pulled out and brought to the National A. V. Anoxin Museum of the Altai Republic.

One of the latest discoveries in the vicinity of the Tuekta village is a one-line inscription on a brown rock with an image of two running deer. It was found by the archaeological group of the Kemerovo State University under the direction of A. I. Martynov in 2008. All in all, five Old Turkic runic inscriptions have been discovered till now in the vicinity of the Tuekta village. Thus, the runic inscriptions found in this area are a very important part of the Altai corpus. The vicinity of the Tuekta village along with the vicinities of the Bičiktu-Boom and Mendür-Sokkon villages proved to be important areas of distribution of the Old Turkic runic writing (Nevskaya & Tybykova, 2011).

The expedition organized in July 2012 by L. N. Tybykova and I. A. Nevskaya together with students of the Goethe-University in Frankfurt a. M. yielded new discoveries of runic monuments. Firstly, several runic-like lines were found in the Ongudaj district in the vicinity of the village Malaja Inja. Secondly, during an inspection of a known runic inscription in a grotto near the river Karban of the Čemal district, new inscriptions were found. The rock surface of a grotto on the western bank of the Karban river has an already known inscription consisting of three lines situated on the right wall of the grotto; it was found by E. P. Matočkin in 1988. On the left wall of this grotto, a new inscription consisting of four lines remained unnoticed by us during our previous research trip there because of numerous modern Cyrillic inscriptions made atop it. Besides, there were letters in gouache paint that covered the bigger part of the surface with that inscription. Fortunately, the paint could be washed and the runes became visible. The inscription consists of 42 runes. The fourth line has a drawing of an arrow and 4 runes.

In addition to these findings, we have received information on further inscriptions discovered in the vicinity of the Bičiktu Boom village by the local specialist B. M. Kindikov, who showed them to the archeologist A. I. Martynov and later to the Kyrgyz Turcologist K. Konkobaev.

In 2012, L. N. Tybykova, I. A. Nevskaya, and M. Erdal published a Catalogue of Old Turkic Runic Written Monuments of the Republic Altai which contains 90 runic inscriptions including one inscription found on the territory of the Altai Kraj (the Altai region). The discoveries of 2012 were not included in the Catalogue as it was published in the beginning of that year. It is therefore necessary to prepare a new edition of the catalogue, which would include recently discovered runic inscriptions.

A number of the inscriptions included in the Catalogue were irrevocably lost because of explosions connected to road construction, as, for example the inscriptions of Bičiktu-Boom and Mendür-Sokkon. There are also some cases of "renewing" the symbols of inscriptions: This "renewing" results in damage to the inscription as a whole and sometimes makes it impossible to read the original runes, as is the case with the Kara-Boom, Semisart and Kurgak inscriptions, some parts of which were "renewed". We need to mention the barbarous destruction of a number of the Kalbak-Taš inscriptions on the third plane, where a very large Cyrillic inscription "2/X 1958 Judin Vasilij Osipovič 15/IX 1941" was carved in 1958 over the runic inscriptions. In July of 2012, during our expedition, we learned of the destruction of runic inscriptions on the second plane of the Kalbak Taš hill by tourists. These inscriptions are well known to Turcologists; they are even protected by the state as a monument of Altai cultural and historic heritage. However, local businessmen built a whole tourist complex there, and make money on the Kalbak Taš inscriptions and petroglyphs without taking care of their preservation.

At present, the Altai Republic is facing an urgent task of preservation of written monuments. They should be collected in the A. V. Anoxin National Museum of the Altai Republic or in its branches in various districts of the Republic wherever possible; especially if an inscription is on a stele or a separate stone.

The search, documentation and study of the runic inscriptions of the Altai Mountains should be continued by joint efforts of archeologists, local regional specialists and philologists. The tradition of studying runic written monuments in the places of their discovery and in museum collections was started by our great predecessors - such as V. V. Radlov, S. M. Malov, A. M. Ščerbak, D. M. Nasilov, V. M. Nadelaev and I. V. Kormušin. The argument "Who should study and decipher inscriptions, philologists or archeologists?", or an attempt to consider philology and Turkic runology as separate disciplines, make no sense. Linguist Turkologists are better familiar with grammatical forms and the language system of Turkic than archeologists and other experts. They are irreplaceable at the stage of interpreting an inscription. On the other hand, archeologists can help to distinguish which lines on a stone represent drawings, which ones are a part of a runic sign and which ones are natural cracks; they can assess the age of separate lines on a stone. Therefore the cooperation of archeologists and turkologists, and also experts on petroglyphs and graffiti is very important for decoding these inscriptions. Each of these disciplines can make an important contribution to this task; these experts should carry out a joint analysis of stones with inscriptions and drawings which are quite frequent in Altai.

The Mountainous Altai continues to be a promising region for the search of further runic inscriptions. Moreover, the written culture of the region appears to be very diverse: In the last years, scientists found not only rock inscriptions written in various types of runic scripts, but also Buddhist manuscripts hidden in mountain caves.

The recent discoveries of new places on the map of the Altai Republic where runic inscriptions are present testify that the runic writing got widespread in the Altai Mountains; this happened presumably during early Middle Ages. At present, it is possible to single out four centers of distribution of the runic writing in the Altai Mountains - the basins of the Ursul and the Karakol rivers, the middle reaches of the Čuja and Katun' rivers, the southeastern Altai, and the Ust'-Kan district. Some finds in other areas indicate a presence of further, unknown, runic monuments there. An aimed search for further inscriptions by runologists, archeologists and regional specialists who love the Altai and are interested in its written history inevitably should lead to new discoveries.