balbals

Noun

balbal (plural balbals)

1. In pre-Islamic Turkic cultures, an anthropomorphic stonen stele embedded in the ground at or near a kurgan (“type of prehistoric burial mound”); some are thought to symbolize enemies which a deceased warrior killed in their lifetime.
   • [T]he Polovtsy or Cumans set up figures holding cups before them, and cases occur of "báby" being found upon barrows of the mediaeval nomads, e.g. at Torskaja Sloboda, district of Kupjansk, government of Kharkov[…]. Further in the Orkhon inscriptions very similar figures are designated as balbals...1913, Ellis H[ovell] Minns, “Scythic Tombs”, in Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus, Cambridge...

   Synonyms:

   kurgan stele