“Left-Handed” Ancient Turkic Statues

The classical canon of the ancient Turkic sculpture is a full-face dressed male statue with belt and weaponry, holding a drinking vessel in one hand in front of the chest. The vessel is in the right hand in the vast majority of statues. However, in a number of extremely rare cases the vessel was placed in the left hand. “Left-handed” statues belong to the same two types of Turkic sculptures as their much more numerous “right-handed” counterparts, with the empty hand resting on either the belt or weapon’s handle. Judging by the appearance of the weapons and vessel, they belong to the same period of the 7th–8th centuries. Geographically, these statues appear in the Russian Altai, Tuva, Northwestern Mongolia, and Eastern and Southern Kazakstan. No “left-handed” statues have been found so far in Kyrgyzstan and other parts of Mongolia. A reasonable assumption that the “left-handed” sculptures depict left-handed people is possible in all cases but one from Barun-Turun, where the represented person is reaching for the weapon with his right hand. Such deviations from the norm seem to reflect the customer’s individual preferences and artisan’s skill. This article calls attention to this phenomenon for inspiring further archaeological inquiry on this topic.