Omurtag's Tarnovo Inscription - Significance

Significance

The final lines of Omurtag's Turnovo Inscription reveal Omurtag's message to future generations: "Even if a man lives well, he dies and another one comes into existence. Let the one who comes later upon seeing this inscription remember the one who had made it. And the name is Omurtag, Kana subigi. Let God make him live 100 years." These lines sound like a direct address to posterity: before his judgement, Omurtag rises with his life philosophy which is fundamentally different from the lachrymose Christian ideology and the salvation it offers in the promise of the soul's perpetual being. The Bulgarian ruler deliberates upon the meaning of human life, upon the great mysteries of birth and death, upon that which stands between them and which history itself sometimes grants immortality. In fact, Omurtag finds immortality in the course of human life without seeing the need to abstract beyond its earthly confines as evinced by the very last line which focuses on the prolonging of life on earth rather than redemption in an imagined afterlife. The philosophical premise here demonstrates a clear awareness of the continuity of history on a grand scale and the frailty and transience of a person's life in comparison with the only consolation here being that person's actions and accomplishments and their role in the lives of people yet to come - the core idea in Omurtag's philosophy. His concise and laconic words do not contain self-glorification, but rather Khan Omurtag seeks the meaning of human existence in a constructive genesis, and it is set in stone by the acknowledging voice of history before which the Bulgarian ruler rises with his remarkable deeds.