LANGUAGE MATERIALS OF THE CENTRAL ASIA AND SIBERIA COLLECTİON OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MANUSCRIPTS AND DOCUMENTS OF THE INSTITUTE OF ORIENTAL MANUSCRIPTS OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Abstract

For more than 100 years, the Department of Manuscripts and Documents of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly the Asiatic Museum, the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) has been collecting materials on linguistic monuments of Central Asia and Siberia (mainly Turkic). However, there was no description and cataloguing of these materials. Since January 2010, the author of the present article has carried out an inventory and identification of these materials. As a result of this work, it was found that the collection contains a large number of unique linguistic materials, mainly rubbings of Turkic runic inscriptions, which significantly expand the possibilities of linguistic and historical study of the written heritage of the ancient Turks. The rubbings are copies of texts of both well-known and unknown monuments, as well as inscriptions that were considered lost. In the course of work with the collection, materials stored in the State Hermitage Museum, the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), the Russian Museum of Ethnography, the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Archives of the Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the RAS were involved. In parallel, work was carried out on the conservation of storage units. Some materials were included from other collections.