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CHRISTIAN (NESTORIAN) TOMBSTONES

More than 200 valuable exhibitions on archaeology, ethnography, photography and documents on the history of Semirechye region of the end of the XIXth- beginning of the XXth century feature collection of the Middle and Central Asia explorer N.Pantusov. This fund contains a unique collection of medieval tombstones with  turkic-syrian inscriptions, excavated at the ancient necropolis of Burana settlement in Chu Valley in 1886-1907. These literary monuments of turkic-language tribes marked Semirechye as an area of Christianity dissemination. Some of the inscriptions have been translated.  One of the tombstones has an engraving, imitating nestorian cross and inscription of fourteen lines in turkic-syrian language:"In 1625/=1341/ year of khan Alexander era, on John the Baptist Friday remembrance at dawn decease of this girl Tangerim Kushtang had come. In Turkic (it is) a year of Dragon, her age was 38, passing of this virtuous from Earth surface  ( or her passing from the surface of this transient Earth) to spirits  (for ever) memory will be. Amen! (P.Cocovtsev version).

TOMBSTONE  christian (nestorian)   Chu Valley.  XIII-XIV th.c. A.D.