“Canvases” on stones

This article addresses a problem associated with burial practices of the Medieval Turkic-speaking population of Northern and Central Asia. According to information of Chinese chronicles, during the rituals of the funeral cycle, the Turks would draw the portraits of their deceased. This topic has long attracted attention of Russian scholars and has been discussed in the literature. The main interpretation connects the above mentioned testimonies on portraits from the chronicles with practice of setting up statues near Old Turkic fences, more precisely, with faces on sculptures and masks in relief pecked on the surfaces of stone slabs, stelae, and boulders located near such sacred structures. There is one more type of these artifacts vertical stones with minimal traces of processing or even without them, devoid of any images, which were set near the fences. In the ritual context, all such objects representing the deceased were equivalent and performed the same function. Five of the identified categories of sculptures had human faces carved on the stone surface, but the last one, the lowest and most widespread, did not. It is concluded that it was precisely this type of monument upon which Old Turkic artists painted portraits of their deceased. An attempt to combine the drawing of averaged facial features of an Old Turkic sculpture with the surface of the stele triggers visualization of "invisible” details partly of natural and partly of artificial origin, which, when viewed normally without a drawing component, are not perceived by the eye, but play an important role in creating a portrait.