On the steppe you see a small hooked mark on a horse's flank. You do not try to read it; you already know whose horse it is. That is a tamga.
Not writing, identity
A tamga is not a letter and not a word. It is the mark of a clan, a family or a person. It is not read, it is recognised.
Where it is struck:
- the horse's flank (ownership)
- a rock face (this is ours)
- carpets and felt (who wove it)
- coins (who minted them)
- gravestones (who lies here)
So a tamga is title and identity at once. Herds mix on the steppe, and this is the only way to sort a mixed herd.
It branches
The most interesting thing about tamgas: related clans use marks that resemble each other.
When a clan grows and splits, the new clan does not invent a sign from nothing; it adds a stroke to the old tamga, curls an end, adds a ring. So by looking at tamgas you can trace who came from whom.
Kashgari's Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk lists the tamgas of the twenty-four Oghuz clans. Looking at them you see how the families divided — a family tree, written in strokes.
Its relation to the alphabet
Some letters of the Old Turkic (Orkhon) alphabet are thought to derive from tamgas. The link is not proven, but the resemblances are strong and the two systems were used in the same geography in the same centuries.
The difference: an alphabet shows a sound, a tamga shows an owner. One exists to be read, the other to be recognised.
In the game
In Balbal, Tamga is a suit of nine tiles, and the best-known marks are there: the Grey Wolf, the Shield, the Double-Headed Eagle, the Ram's Head, Lightning, the Kopuz.
And there is this: the same code is a different object in every realm. In the Middle World, Tamga 4 is the Grey Wolf; the same code is a Horned Skull in the Underworld and an Eagle in the Sky. Three things in one tile slot, each saying something else — much as clans that split derive different marks from one tamga.
Every symbol is here — 42 codes, 3 realms, 126 separate marks.
See also: tamga · Eternal Stones