Khashaat's Ruins Evoke Ancient Memories
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| Exterior of
the museum, with Japanese visitors |
Khöshöö Tsaidam (Mongolian,
Хөшөө Цайдам) - the
nearly 1300-yea-old remains of a steppe empire - is the most
famous place in Khashaat sum. However, it's far from the village
part of Khashaat, hence it requires a special trip. I never ran
into it just going about my business. I paid it a visit it last
year on April 11, and although I'm a little late (April 17) now,
in this blog's current spirit of "This Day in [the] History [of My
Time in Mongolia]," let's look at Khöshöö Tsaidam, one of the
archaeological treasures of Mongolia.
 |
| Poster in
my school. It reads, "The Turkic-era memorial complex at
Khöshöö Tsaidam, and several artifacts." |
 |
| Khöshöö
Tsaidam is also admired outside Khashaat: This poster is
from a series of posters of famous Mongolian places that
covered the walls of a classroom in Tsetserleg. |
Bilge Khan and the Göktürk Empire
Modern Turkish is the best known of the Turkic languages, but it
was spread to the land now called Turkey by invasion from Central
Asia. There are many other Turkic languages spoken Central and
Northern Asia, and in fact, the Turks may have originated in
Western Mongolia near the Altai Mountains. While China was ruled
by the Tang Dynasty, most of the lands to its north were part of
the Second Turkic Khaganate. This vast nomadic conglomerate was
led by the Göktürks or "Blue Turks" (Mongolian:
Хөх Түрэг /
Höh Türeg),
and in the 8th century the Blue Turks were led by Bilge Khagan (
Билэг
хаан, 683? - 734 A.D.), with the help of his brother
and military commander, Kultegin (
Көлтэгин /
Культегин
/
Күлтэгин, died 731).
In addition to accomplishing many things politically and
militarily, Bilge Khan liked to boast about his accomplishments.
To this end, he erected two stele in the valley of the Orkhon
river. The stele describe his and his brother's achievements in a
bilingual inscription in Orkhon runes and Chinese characters.
Those runes (together with a few other inscriptions from the same
time) are the oldest writing in any Turkic language.
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| Билгэ
хааны тахилын онгон - "Bilge Khan's sacrificial idol" |
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| How Bilge Khan's monument would have looked in the 8th century |
The Turkic Empire soon crumbled, and its monuments were also
left to crumble for hundreds of years. The site of these ruins
became known in the Mongolian language as
Хөшөө Цайдам
(variously transliterated as
Khöshöö Tsaidam,
Khushuu
Tsaidam, or
Koshu Tsaidam). In the 19th century they
were found by Russian explorers, and translated by the Danish
linguist Vilhelm Thomsen. Along with other remains of ancient
kingdoms scattered along the Orkhon river, Khöshöö Tsaidam was
inscribed in UNESCO's world heritage list in 2004 as part of the
"Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape" (
Орхон хөндийн соёлын
дурсгал) [1]. The museum was established in 2011 -
just weeks after I arrived in Mongolia (although I didn't know it
yet!) [2]
 |
| Headless
stone men? |
 |
| Bilge
Khan's crown |
The Museum
April 11, 2014 fell during the Mongolian secondary school's
spring break, and I was at site, with nothing to do. When my
JICA friends from
Kharhorin told me they were going to visit Khöshöö Tsaidam and
Ögii Lake and asked if I wanted to come, off I went.
When I was
invited to Mongolia by Peace Corps and read about archaeological
finds in Mongolia, I orignally imagined some broad lonely field
with decayed stone brushed by the wind. I wondered whether I
should bring tracing paper to make my own rubbings, as past
archaeologists have done. I soon realized I had a fat chance of actually
touching them - the ruins are in a museum now, of course.
 |
| Хар бэхээр зурсан зураг бүхий дээврийн ваар - black ink-drawing on a roof tile |
The museum features many small artifacts from that time period,
but the centerpiece, of course, is the inscribed steles. Orkhon
writing is often referred to as "runes" due to its resemblance to
the runes used by the Germanic peoples (and Tolkien's dwarves!),
but they arose independently of each other. The sharp, narrow
character of Orkhon runes is due to their use in decorating steles
like Bilge Khan's. Cutting stone is hard and it's much easier to
make straight lines. Around the world, stone-carved scripts tend
to be angular and brush-written scripts tend to be curvier. That
is not as interesting though, as the fact that apparently Orkhon
were sometimes read
from the bottom up [3].
 |
| One of
Bilge Khan's monuments |
Having seen them in person, I realize Khöshöö Tsaidam had been
interesting to me long before I even knew what it was. When I was
a child and beginning to be interested in language, I read an old,
fat book about the history of writing around the world. Although I
did not remember the name "Khöshöö Tsaidam," I remembered "Orkhon
Turkish runes" and a page with a facsimile of them. How strange to
think that now I was living next to something I had remembered
from a book years ago.
 |
| Narrow,
angular "runes" on the face of the stela |
I took photos of the entire surface of the stele shown above in
case I ever had the chance, and knowledge, to interpret it, but it
turned out I didn't need to. Passing a tiny merchandise stand on
our way out, I saw the book shown below,
Хөх Түрүгийн Бичиг
by
Д. Баатар. The book featured a complete transcription,
transliteration, and translation (into Mongolian) of the steles.
This being a museum gift shop, it cost almost $30 ...
but
the book was right there right then and I didn't know if I would
ever see it again,
so ... of course I bought it!
Read more on this blog about the word
хөшөө in the next
Mongolian Word of the Week!
More Reading
Notes
- See UNESCO's site for the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape at
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1081.
- June 27th, 2011, according to the news article "Хөшөө цайдам
музейн нээлт боллоо" at http://www.mecs.gov.mn/mod/print/index.php?id=635
(in Mongolian).
- This odd writing direction (unique as far as I know of the
world's languages) is mentioned on the Omniglot page (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/orkhon.htm).
However, from reading my book on the inscriptions - Хөх
Түрүгийн Бичиг (The Göktürk Script) by D. Baatar,
it seems clear that Bilge Khan's inscription at least does not
work this way.
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