Altyn-Aryg, 'the Golden Pure', is the warrior-maiden heroine of one of the great Khakas alyptygh nymakh, the sung heroic epics, recorded from the singer S. P. Kadyshev and published in 1988. Born not of woman but miraculously from a white stone in the mountains, she is a deathless alyp of prodigious strength who overcomes every warrior sent against her and stands as protector of her people. Her epic belongs to the distinctive Khakas tradition of female alyp-khys protagonists, unusual among Turkic peoples, in which the heroine passes between the upper, middle and lower worlds of the tripartite cosmos.