Old Turkic Script

The Old Turkic script, also called the Gokturk, Orkhon or Orkhon-Yenisey script or Turkic runes, is the alphabet used by the Gokturks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to the 10th centuries to write the Old Turkic language. It takes its name from the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia, where early 8th-century inscriptions were found in an 1889 expedition led by Nikolai Yadrintsev. Those inscriptions were published by Vasily Radlov and deciphered in 1893 by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen. The script was later used in the Uyghur Khaganate, a Yenisei variant is known from 9th-century Yenisei Kyrgyz inscriptions, and it has likely cousins in the Talas Valley and in the Old Hungarian alphabet of the 10th century. Words were usually written from right to left.