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Ancient Stone Men of the East Wind: The Turkic image stones, and the hands. Two carved stone figures stand on an open mountain plain. The larger statue is in the foreground. Another waits behind it. Wind has taken the sharpness from their faces. Belts, vessels, and hands remain. These monuments are usually called Turkic stone statues, stone men, or image stones related to the balbal tradition. Examples like these stand in western Mongolia, including the Mongolian Altai near Shiveet Khairkhan, where Turkic-period remains have been recorded. They belong broadly to the 6th to 9th centuries CE, when early Turkic groups raised memorial complexes across the steppe. In Mongolia the carved human figure is only one part of a ritual landscape. Square stone enclosures, offering areas, and rows of smaller standing stones often run east from the enclosure. Orientation is not casual. The image stones themselves commonly face east, the direction that mattered in Turkic funerary practice. They were not generic idols. Many hold a cup, bowl, or vessel at chest level. Belts, weapons, earrings, purses, and boots can be shown as well. The statue is a person: an elite dead man (sometimes a woman in later types) still present at his own feast. The grammar of the Turkic hand On the classic statue of the Turkic Khaganate the right arm bends at the elbow and lifts a vessel to the chest. The left hand often rests on a sword pommel, a belt, or the same vessel. Later types, more common from the 8th century onward and farther west, hold a vessel with both hands. Researchers divide the corpus by that gesture: - Type I: vessel in the right hand. Mainly male. Often stands outside the east side of a square enclosure, with a line of simpler stones extending farther east. - Type II: vessel in both hands. Appears later and over a wider range, from Mongolia into Kazakhstan and the Kipchak steppe. Can include female figures. How the cup is held also varies. Some pinch a goblet stand between thumb and forefinger. Some cradle a round-bottomed bowl on an open palm. Some grasp the body of the vessel. The cup is the subject. It marks libation, commemoration, and the dead man's place at a banquet that does not end. The left hand on a weapon does not cancel the feast. It names the man who earned it. A note on words. In popular use "balbal" covers every standing stone on the steppe. In the stricter sense of the Orkhon inscriptions, balbals are the simpler stones in those eastern rows: a tally of enemies whose souls were believed to serve the dead. The carved man with the cup is the host, not the tally. The Turkic stone man opens the hands into ritual work. One hand lifts a cup to the chest. The other often keeps a weapon. The dead man is not only present. He drinks. He is armed. He faces the sunrise over a line of conquered stones. The portrait is specific: beard, belt set, earrings, the exact pinch of a goblet stand or the bowl resting on a palm. The Turkic carver is not abstracting a cosmic body. He is seating a particular lord at a particular table that faces east. Stand again in front of the two figures on the plain. The larger one in the foreground still holds what he was given to hold. Behind him the second man waits his turn in the same grammar. East is in front of them. The mountains keep the rest.