The Title τούδουνος / tudun and the Göktürks – An Unrecognised Fragment of Menander Protector’s Histories (Lexicon Αἱμωδεῖν τ 11)

Abstract

This study of Turkic and East Roman/Byzantine linguistic exchange seeks to connect Turkological scholarship with research in medieval Greek lexicography. While older studies recognised τουδοῦνος/τούδουνος in eighth-/ninth-century historical sources as a Greek rendering of the Turkic title tudun , specifically among contemporary Khazars, limited citation of Byzantine lexica left analysis of the evidence incomplete. Examination of hitherto uncited texts, particularly the Lexicon Αἱμωδεῖν , a ninth-/tenth-century glossary of uncommon words in selected late antique classicising histories, traces the origin of a lexical entry τούδουνοι to a now-lost part of the fragmentary Histories of Menander Protector, demonstrating that tudun > τούδουνος entered Greek vocabulary a century and a half earlier than previously thought and in the context of East Roman embassies to the Göktürks c.568/9–576.