On new corrections and interpretations in the Book of Dede Korkut
67th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Gotemba 2025
The Book of Dede Korkut is a common literary and cultural heritage of Turkic-speaking peoples. So far, we have three known copies: Dresden (Drs.), Vatican and Ankara copies. These copies were written in Old Anatolian Turkish. The reading, interpretation and translation of the Book of Dede Korkut was done on the basis of the Dresden manuscript.
In our paper, some words and phrases will be evaluated in terms of re-reading and interpretation, based on newly found copies/manuscripts of the Book of Dede Korkut. For this, the Günbed manuscript (December 2018) and the Bursa copy (February 2022) discovered in recent years were taken into consideration. References will also be made to the readings and interpretations made by previous researchers (Tezcan/Boeschoten; Özçelik etc).
The following words will be evaluated in this paper. In this way, we hope to contribute to the words/phrases that are unreadable or misinterpreted in the Book of Dede Korkut.
Drs.49b.6: alaŋ alçaq hova yér;
Example of a compound sentence in which the conjunction “ki” is omitted:
Drs.49a.12-13: Mere bāzirgānlar, varuŋ iḳlīm [iḳlīm] araŋ, [ki] Beyregüŋ ölüsi [dirisi] ḫaberin getüreydüŋüz ola mı, dér. In Turkish: “Bre bezirgânlar varın iklim (iklim) arayın,¹ Beyrek’in ölüsü 13haberini getirirdiniz belki,”² der. “You merchants, look for a climate, perhaps you will bring the news of Beyrek’s death,” he says.
Example of a rhetorical question sentence:
Drs.92b.10: ḳayurur dı olur? → ḳayudur mı olur: “döner mi acep /m’ola?”
Alp erenler karīminden kayurur dı olur? →Alp erenler karīminden kayudur mı olur?
“Will the warriors ever turn back / give up on their enemy?”
Drs.74b.3: ḳanın duşar→ ḳanın daşar (In Turkish: “Kaynayıp coşup taşar.”) “It boils and overflows.”
Drs.37a.4-5: çāya(!) baḳsa çālımlu→ ḳıya baḳsa çālımlu
[1] Brs.38a.12: iḳlim iḳlim araη.
[2] Yzm. ve Brs.: getireydüηüz olamı.