Sergey Klyashtorny on ancient Turkic alphabet

Orientalist and Turkologist, professor Sergey Grigoryevich Klyashtorny would have turned 80 this winter. One of his most important scientific works is the book "Monuments of Ancient Turkic Script and Ethnocultural History of Central Asia." His works helped to deal a powerful blow to all pseudo-scientific amateurs, who claimed that Turks didn't have any culture and script in particular.

"Why can we talk about ancient Turkic civilization? Turks created their own original script that was never used anywhere before. These scriptures were mystery for European scientists, although they came across certain insriptions. Up to 1891, when Russian scientist Nikolai Mikhailovich Yadrintsev [his discoveries include the Orkhon script, Genghis Khan's capital, Karakorumand Ordu-Baliq, the capital of the Uyghur Khaganate] discovered in Northern Mongolia, where the headquarters of Turkic Kaghans were based, two huge, four meters high steles, covered from three sides by Turkic runic inscriptions, and Chinese inscriptions on the fourth. The discovery produced a furor in scientific society. Finally, 200 years old mystery will be solved! Finally, Turkic Champollion will appear!

And this Champollion appeared indeed. It was Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomson, followed by Russian academician Vasily Vasilyevich Radlov. Thomson was the first to find the key to reading of these scripts, while Radlov was the first to translate them into European language. He translated and published them in German, so that all European scientists, shocked by this discovery, could read about this," Klyashtorny told.

Sergey Grigoryevich Klyashtorny was born in Gomel in 1928, studied at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the Leningrad State University in the departments of Turkic philology and history of the Near and Middle East. He worked in the sector of Turkic and Mongol studies of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, was a teacher at the Department of Turkic Philology of the Leningrad State University and at the Department of Central Asia and the Caucasus of St. Petersburg's State University. Until his death in 2014, he headed the Central and South Asia Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences.