The Nagyszentmiklós Treasure is a hoard of 23 golden vessels, discovered in 1799 in Banat (today western Romania) and now housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Among these masterpieces of early medieval goldwork is a shallow drinking bowl inscribed in Greek letters, yet filled not with Greek words, but with a striking blend of Proto-Bulgar (Oghur Turkic), Slavic, and steppe-Mongolic terms.
This text, known as the Buyla inscription, reveals the multicultural crossroads of the early medieval Carpathian Basin and offers a rare glimpse into the political vocabulary that shaped the region.
Even though the inscription is clearly legible, its meaning remains undeciphered, and what follows is my own interpretation.
The Buyla Inscription
ΒΟΥΗΛΑ ΖΟΑΠΑΝ ΤΕϹΗ · ΔΥΓΕΤΟΙΓΗ · ΒΟΥΤΑΟΥΛ ΖΩΑΠΑΝ · ΤΑΓΡΟΓΗ ΗΤΖΙΓΗ ΤΑΙϹΗ
My reading:
“Boila, Župan of the Tisa, has dedicated this for the Buda Župan: this round vessel of Ichigi the Taishi.”
This formula captures the donor (Boila of the Tisa), the recipient (Buda Župan), and the prestige owner/title (Ichigi Taishi), woven together in the multi-layered titulature of the steppe.
ΒΟΥΗΛΑ ΖΟΑΠΑΝ ΤΕϹΗ – “Boila, Župan of the Tisa”
Boila (Boyla, Beile)
In Proto-Bulgar and First Bulgarian Empire sources, boila was both a title and, at times, a personal name.
It designated a high noble or aristocrat, usually with military or administrative responsibilities. Inscriptions from Chatalar and Madara mention boilas as members of the ruler’s council.
Byzantine historians such as Theophanes and Constantine Porphyrogenitus describe boilas as companions of the Bulgar rulers, known as khans.
Later Inner Asian parallels include Mongol and Manchu Beile, which was a princely rank.
Župan
A well-attested Slavic title.
A župan was the head of a local community, roughly equivalent to a count.
From župa “district, valley.”
Tesa/Tisa
Many have read Tesi(e) as a personal name, but after the word Župan one would normally expect the name of a district (župa), not a person.
Therefore, I believe that the second element, Tesi, is best understood as a regional designation: the Tisa (Tisza) river valley – the very region where the Nagyszentmiklós hoard was unearthed.
This also suggests that Boila here is best read as a personal name, not merely a title.
ΔΥΓΕΤΟΙΓΗ – “has completed/dedicated this”
This term matches the Old Turkic verb tükä- / tügä- “to finish, to complete,” attested in the Orkhon inscriptions (tükäldi “it was completed”; Tekin, Orhon Yazıtları, 1968).
ΔΥ = tüge/düge – “to finish, to complete”
ΤΟΙ = -ti (preterite, “he did”)
ΓΗ = -gi (from Proto-Turkic -gü, via Old Anatolian Turkish -gü, Ottoman -gi). The suffix -gi is deverbal, forming nouns of result:
bilmek “to know” → bilgi “knowledge.
övmek “to praise” → övgü “praise.”
çizmek “to draw” → çizgi “line.”
Thus dugetoigi ≈ tügäti-gi = “the completed/dedicated [thing],” exactly the kind of inscriptional formula used in steppe contexts.
ΒΟΥΤΑΟΥΛ ΖΩΑΠΑΝ – “for the Buda Župan”
Butaoul
Traditionally read as a title (butaul = envoy, officer in some Byzantine accounts of the Bulgars).
Morphologically, however, it may be parsed as a toponym: bud-aul = “the settlement of Buda.”
In Turkic, aul means “camp, encampment, settlement.”
The element Buda is a recognizable name, later the core of modern Budapest, already inhabited in the 9th century.
ΤΑΓΡΟΓΗ ΗΤΖΙΓΗ ΤΑΙϹΗ – “(This is) the bowl of Ichigi the Taishi”
Tagrogi
From Mongolic tögrög = “circle, round object, coin,” still the name of the Mongolian currency today.
In this context, the most natural meaning is “this round vessel”, directly identifying the golden bowl.
Ichigi
Just like Boila, Ichigi can function either as a personal name or as a title. In this case, I interpret it as a personal name, based on the context of the inscription.
The word matches Old Turkic ičiγ = “inside, interior,” and as a title we find Ičig beg = “inner lord, chamberlain.”
In Mongolic, the cognate ičige refers to a retainer or trusted insider of the khan’s household. Morphologically, it derives from ič(i)- (“inside”) + -gi (nominal suffix), literally “the insider” or “the inner one.”
Taishi
A high title of Chinese origin (tàishī, 太師 = Grand Preceptor).
Among the Mongols, Taishi was one of the highest noble titles, often borne by regents or magnates, e.g. Esen Taishi, Sayin Taishi, Altan Taishi.
As we can see, the structure [Name/Epithet] + Taishi is standard.
Why It Matters
The inscription blends Bulgar titles (Boila), Slavic administration (Župan), and Turkic-Mongolic court ranks (Ichigi, Taishi) into a single text.
It shows how elites in the Carpathian Basin used a shared steppe vocabulary to express hierarchy, diplomacy, and gift-exchange.
The golden bowl itself becomes a physical witness to the overlapping worlds of the Bulgars, Slavs, and steppe aristocracy in the early 9th century.
Slavic Hungary
The Buyla inscription blends Bulgar aristocratic ranks (Boila), Slavic administration (Župan), and Turkic-Mongolic court titles (Ichigi, Taishi) into a single dedicatory text.
It shows how elites in the Carpathian Basin shared a steppe political vocabulary to express hierarchy, diplomacy, and gift exchange.
The golden bowl itself becomes a physical witness to this encounter. The dominant population around both the Tisa and Buda regions was Slavic, explaining the use of the župa system of territorial division, an institution that likely predated the Bulgars and was absorbed into their administration.
Archaeology confirms that Buda was a major Slavic settlement in the 9th century, and toponyms like Buda and Pest are Slavic in origin — the city only became Hungarian later.
The inscription is generally dated to the early 9th century (c. 800–850 CE), just a generation or two before the Magyar conquest (895–896).
A Crucial Step Toward Cyrillic
The Buyla inscription is significant because it captures the transitional world of early medieval Balkans, just before the rise of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Although written in Greek letters, its text was Bulgar, proving that local elites were already adapting Greek script to non-Greek languages.
In fact, the Buyla bowl is not an isolated case—we have around 10–15 known inscriptions that mix Greek script with Bulgar elements, the most famous being the Madarа Rider inscriptions and the Chatalar inscription of Omurtag.
Under Boris I’s conversion to Christianity and Simeon I’s cultural program, the old Bulgar language of the aristocracy was replaced by Old Church Slavonic, which became the official state and church language.
This change set the stage for the creation of the Cyrillic script in Bulgaria in the late ninth century: a writing system modeled on Greek uncial but adapted to Slavic sounds.
In this way, the Buyla inscription can be seen as a direct predecessor of Cyrillic – an early experiment in using Greek letters to express another language —paving the way for the alphabet that would shape the literary and cultural history of Eastern Europe and the Orthodox Slavic world.
This practice was not without precedent: the Thracian language had also been written in Greek letters centuries earlier, showing that this ideas was part of a much deeper tradition in the Balkans.
