M.73.5.581e: Above figure to the left: “They torture a man or woman who has had sexual relations during menstruation or the period after childbirth by pulling their tongue out of their neck”. Above figure to the right: “angel” [ḥayż nifāsniŋ ičida er maẓlūm jimāʿ qilġan kišiniŋ tilini kičkäsidin tartip ʿaẕāb qilur

Featured on PDR in the collection Punishment in the Afterlife: an Eastern Turki Manuscript

We came across these mysterious fragments of manuscript in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art digital collections which list them only as being from an "Unknown Manuscript", from the 19th century and as possibly originating from Turkestan. Keen to find out more we wrote to a few experts in Turkic languages and received some very helpful replies. Dr Helga Anetshofer from the University of Chicago and Dr David Brophy from the University of Sydney worked together to identify the language as being “Eastern Turki” (which is the dialect of the Tarim Basin from the late 19th and early 20th century, a precursor to modern Uyghur), and provided the following transliterations and translations which you see in the captions below each picture. The general theme…