Stele
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A stele[1] is a stone or wooden slab, mostly taller than it is wide, that is erected for commemorative purposes. Mostly it is decorated with the names and titles of the person that shall remind of. This is inscribed, carved in relief or painted onto the slab.
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[change] History and function
Stelae were also used as territorial markers, as the boundary stelae of Akhenaten at Amarna,[2] or to commemorate military victories.[3] They were widely used in the Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt, Ethiopia, and, quite independently, in China and some Buddhist cultures, and, more surely independently, by Mesoamerican civilisations, especially the Olmec[4] and Maya.[5] The huge number of stelae that survive from ancient Egypt and in Central America are one of the largest and most significant sources of information on those civilisations.
Unfinished standing stones, set up without inscriptions from Libya in North Africa to Scotland were monuments of pre-literate Megalithic cultures in the Late Stone Age.
An obelisk is a specialized kind of stele. The Celtic high crosses of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are specialized stelae. Likewise, the Totem pole of North and South America is a type of stelae. Gravestones are also kinds of stelae.
In 2004 the architect Peter Eisenman created a field of some 2,700 blank stelae, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin[6] to memory of the Holocaust.
[change] Notable individual stelae
[change] Gallery
 Ancient Egyptian funerary stele |
 Healing stele of Horus-(a Cippus of Horus). Ptolemaic dynasty, c. 305-30 BC. |
 Sueno's Stone in Forres, Scotland |
 Maya stela, Quirigua |
 Kildalton Cross 800 AD Islay, Scotland |
 The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum |
 3-D view of Rosetta Stone-Left side |
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 A Buddhist Stele from China, Northern Wei period, built in the early 6th century |
 Scythian 5th–4th c.BC. Salbyk kurgan surrounded by balbals with kurgan obelisk on the top. Upper Enisey-Irtysh interfluvial |
[change] See also
[change] Bibliography
- John Boardman ed., The Cambridge Ancient History, Part 1, 2nd Edition, (ISBN-13: 9780521224963 | ISBN-10: 0521224969)
- Christopher A. Pool, Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica, Cambridge University Press 2007 (ISBN-13: 9780521783125)
- Karen E. Till, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place, University of Minnesota Press 2005
[change] Footnotes and references
- ↑ from Greek: στήλη, stēlē, IPA: /ˈstiːli/; plural: stelae, στῆλαι, stēlai, IPA: /ˈstiːlaɪ/; also found: Latinised singular stela and Anglicised plural steles
- ↑ Memoirs By Egypt Exploration Society Archaeological Survey of Egypt 1908, p. 19
- ↑ e.g. Piye's victory stela (M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol 3, The University of California Press 1980, , pp.66ff) or Shalmaneser's stela at Saluria (Boardman, op.cit, p.335)
- ↑ Pool, op.cit., p.265
- ↑ Pool, op.cit., p.277
- ↑ Till, op.cit., p.168
