Khosho Tsaidam Monuments

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The Khosho Tsaidam Monuments, located in the Tsaidam Valley Lake along the western part of the Orkhon River in Mongolia, are two memorial monuments associated with the Gök Türk Empire in the early 8th century. These are the Bilge Khan (683-734) and Kul-Tegin (684-731) memorials –commemorating a politician and his younger brother who was Commander in Chief of the armed forces. There are two other smaller memorials and a fifth that has recently been revealed.

Large numbers of Turkic remains are known across what was the vast Gök Türk Empire, which stretched from the edges of China (they besieged what is now Xi’an) east, to what is now Iran in the west. Only however in the Mongolia have memorials to kings, lords and aristocrats been found. Those at Khosho Tsaidam are the largest and most impressive monuments of their kind. They consist of huge, vertical stone tablets inscribed with the distinctive Turkic runic-like script –the earliest Inner Asian known language- first deciphered in 1893 and providing much evidence of Gök Türk culture.

The Bilge Khan memorial is set within a walled enclosure. The inscribed stone has a carved twisted dragon at its top and on one of the faces a carved ibex –the emblem of Gök Türk khans. The slab was set into the back of a carved stone turtle. Found alongside was a beautiful carving of a man and a woman sitting cross-legged– perhaps the Khan and his queen.

The Kul-Tegin memorial, also originally erected on a stone turtle, was similarly set within an enclosure, with walls covered in white adobe and decorated inside with coloured pictures. Fragments of carved figures of perhaps the Khan and his wife have also been found. In both enclosures is there evidence of altars.

The sites were first excavated in 1889. Since 2000, Mongolian and Turkish archaeologists have collaborated in comprehensive excavation and study of the area. Protective fences have been erected around the site and a purpose built building put up to house recovered items and provide work-space for researchers.

These memorials are the most important known archaeological remains of the Gök Türk Empire, which extended through Central Asia from the 6th - 8th centuries AD. The unique information contained in the extensive runic inscriptions on the steles located at the memorials has proven extremely valuable to the study of Central Asian history and culture; in addition, the memorial sites have supplied particular insight into the world outlook, religious beliefs, architecture, arts, literary development and foreign relations of Central Asian peoples. The monuments are essentially unique insofar as similar memorials to contemporary aristocrats have not been found anywhere outside of Mongolia.