The Ankara Silver Bowl (original) (raw)
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TURKOLOGY, 2022
In this study, as a scientific team carrying out archaeological field works in the region, we would like to evaluate the inscribed silver bowl coming from Issyk kurgan excavations in its own context, on the basis of the results of archaeological, anthropological and genetic researches. The Issyk kurgan is an important ancient archaeological site belonging to the Pazyryk culture group, which is located in the vast Altay cultural zone stretching Alma-Ata to the Minusinsk, Urals to the Baikal, and Berel to the Tarim basin. With the results of archaeological, anthropological and genetic researches, we have been trying to show -for years- that the ethnic basis of the Pazyryk culture group was formed by the indigenous Türkic people of Altay. On the other hand, it has been stubbornly claimed by our Western colleagues that the culture belongs to the Indo-European speaking communities, without convincing scientific evidence being put forward. The problem here is not whether the peoples of the Pazyryk culture group spoke Türkic or Indo-European, but whether the silver bowl has been found at the kurgan as an imported object. The tradition of runic inscriptions, engraved with the Old Türkic alphabet on the Issyk’s silver bowl is not undefined practice to the Altay cultural zone. In many respects, this type of inscription tradition has nothing to do with the Iranian cultural group, nor with the most particularly the concept of the Pre-Proto-Mongolic and Mongolic, as proposed in one of the recent works concerning the Issyk inscription. Typologically, the Issyk’s silver bowl reflects an indispensable model of the libation vessels of the Eurasian Iron Age and Early Middle Age steppe cultures. The typical Türkic runic alphabet carved on the silver bowl has a historical background of at least 1300 years in the Altay cultural zone. Therefore, we would like to emphasize insistently here that the Issyk’s silver bowl is not an undefined cultural material to the native communities of Altay cultural zone and is not found as an imported object within the context of the Issyk Kurgan.