SCRIPTA
IFront MatterIIIThe LettersIVDeciphermentVMechanicsVILineageVIIIn the World
I

Front Matter

Sogdian

The lingua franca script of Silk Road trade (4th century BC–10th century AD).

𐼰 𐼱 𐼲 𐼳 𐼴 𐼵 𐼶 𐼷
Era
Ancient
Region
Middle East
System
Abjad
Direction
Right to Left (RTL)
Signs
20
Status
Extinct
The lingua franca script of Silk Road trade (4th century BC–10th century AD). Sogdian merchants built trade networks across Central Asia, developing this script into an international commercial language. There was a Sogdian residential district in Tang dynasty Chang'an (Xi'an), and Sogdian language documents are among the Silk Road artifacts preserved in Japan's Shōsōin repository in Nara. Sogdian script is the key link in Eurasia's longest script lineage: Sogdian → Uyghur → Mongolian → Manchu. Sogdian merchants carried not only goods but religions — Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Nestorian Christianity coexisted within a single people. Tang-dynasty Changan had a Hu (Sogdian) quarter, and several Chinese words (Hu sock, Hu cake, Hu horn, Hu spinning dance) trace back to the Sogdians. The Umayyad capture of Samarkand in 712 and Genghis Khan invasion in 1220 erased Sogdian from history, yet their script survived through Uyghur, Mongolian, and Manchu — alive to this day.
III

The Letters

Signs · Unicode · Types
Sample GlyphsClick to copy
Unicode
Range 1U+10F30–U+10F6F
Total signs20
In Unicode82
Unicode Blocks
Sogdian
10F30 – 10F6F
42 chars→
Old Sogdian
10F00 – 10F2F
40 chars→
Glyph evolution
Form change over time
Loading evolution data…
IV

The Decipherment

Discovered 1907 · deciphered from 1931 onward
Key scholars
The Sogdian Ancient Letters — five letters
Wang Yuanlu (Daoist priest)1849–1931
A Daoist priest cleaning the Mogao Caves. In 1900 he broke through a sealed wall in Cave 17 (the "Library Cave"), uncovering tens of thousands of manuscripts that had been sealed for nearly a millennium. He did not at first realize their value.
Aurel Stein1862–1943
Discovered the five letters in a ruined watchtower west of Dunhuang in 1907. That same year he removed ~7,000 scrolls from Mogao Cave 17 to Britain — one bundle of which contained a script no one had ever seen.
Paul Pelliot1878–1945
French sinologist. Arrived at Dunhuang in 1908; fluent in Classical Chinese, he selected the scholarly most valuable scrolls and brought them to the Bibliothèque nationale de France. One of the Sogdian Ancient Letters is held in Paris today, the other four in London.
Hans Reichelt1877–1939
Published the first edition and translation of the Ancient Letters in 1931.
W. B. Henning1908–1967
Dated the letters to 313–314 AD from their reference to the fall of Luoyang.
Nicholas Sims-Williams1949–
Produced the modern standard editions and established Sogdian grammar and lexicon.

Before

Sogdian had been forgotten for some 1,500 years. Once the lingua franca of Silk Road trade, it became unreadable after the Sogdians vanished from history.

Breakthrough

In 1907 Aurel Stein found five sealed letters in a ruined watchtower west of Dunhuang. Since Sogdian was known to be an Aramaic-derived consonantal script (abjad), scholars reconstructed its sound values using related Middle Iranian languages (Middle Persian, Parthian). Henning pinned their date to 313–314 AD from their mention of the fall of Luoyang.

After

The letters gave a vivid record of 4th-century Silk Road trade and ordinary lives — a daughter writing to her mother in Samarkand, a merchant reporting that Luoyang had fallen, a demand to settle a debt. They confirmed Sogdian as the starting point of Eurasia's longest script lineage: Sogdian → Uyghur → Mongolian → Manchu.

Decoded signs
Glyph → phonetic → meaning
𐼰
ʾ / a
Aleph (Aramaic ʾālep) → glottal / vowel a
𐼱
b / β
Beth → consonant b/β
𐼲
g / γ
Gimel → consonant g/γ
𐼳
w / u
Waw → consonant w / vowel u
𐼶
y / i
Yodh → consonant y / vowel i
𐼷
k
Kaph → consonant k
𐼹
m
Mem → consonant m
𐼺
n
Nun → consonant n
𐼿
r
Resh → consonant r
𐽀
š
Shin → consonant š
𐽁
t
Taw → consonant t
The Sogdian Ancient Letters (summary)
Rosetta Stone — passage by passage
01
Letters 1 & 3 — A woman (Miwnay (미흐나이)) writes to her mother in Samarkand, stranded in Dunhuang with no way home.
02
Letter 2 — The merchant Nanai-vandak reports home: "Luoyang is no more" — the city had fallen to raiders.
03
Letter 5 — A request to settle business debts, with news of family.
Full decipherment storyBranching from Aramaic, Sogdian was the lingua franca of the Silk Road. It was deciphered through the five Dunhuang letters of 1907 and comparison with related Iranian languages, and revealed as the ancestor of the Uyghur, Mongolian, Manchu, and Todo scripts.→
V

Reading Mechanics

Direction · Method
↔
Direction
Right to Left (RTL)
우→좌 (RTL). 후기에는 세로쓰기도 사용.
α
System
Abjad
⌨
Input method
Direct Unicode input
Keyboard layout
Standard IME · input chart
Keyboard layout data not yet available.
VI

The Lineage

Family · Descendants
Phylogeny
Descendants of hieroglyphs
Phylogeny
Related scripts
Ancestors · Descendants · Family

Ancestors

Imperial Aramaic

Descendants

Traditional Mongolian ScriptOld Uyghur

Same family

Traditional Mongolian ScriptOld Uyghur
VII

In the World

Usage · Reach

Languages

Sogdian

Countries

UzbekistanTajikistanChina