Pazyryk rug
The numerical values of the carpet show striking genealogical parallels to the Oghuz-Turkic legend, perhaps based on an older version of the Massageteans. This genealogy is shown in the way the pattern is divided into 24 tribes. On the left and right their are groups of 12 tribes in each. According to Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, the founder of the Oghuz tribes had six sons, with each having four sons. As mentioned in the “Shiji” (“Historical Records”) of Sima Qian this scheme was a result of the military administrative reform of the Xiongnu leader Modu Chanyu in 209/206-174 BC which in turn originated from the Turkic primordial ancestor Oghuz Khagan. Many Turkic cultures today use his legend to describe their ethnic origins. Historian Sergei Tolstov writes that this scheme “...was preserved by the Aral foreland Huns, the Kidarites-Hephthalites, and was inherited by their descendants, the tribes of the Oghuz alliance in the 10th – 11th centuries AD and, finally, by the Turkmens of the 19th century AD – beginning of the 20th century AD.”