Stelae have also been used to publish laws and decrees, to record a ruler's exploits and honors, to mark sacred territories or mortgaged properties, as territorial markers, as the boundary steles of
Akhenaton at
Amarna, or to commemorate military victories. They were widely used in the
ancient Near East,
Mesopotamia,
Greece,
Egypt,
Somalia,
Eritrea,
Ethiopia, and, most likely independently, in
China and elsewhere in the
Far East, and, independently, by
Mesoamerican civilisations, notably the
Olmec and
Maya. , King of
Simurrum. It dates back to the
Old Babylonian Period. From
Qarachatan Village, Slemani Governorate,
Iraqi Kurdistan. Located in the
Slemani Museum, Iraq. The large number of stelae, including inscriptions, surviving from
ancient Egypt and in
Central America constitute one of the largest and most significant sources of information on those civilisations, in particular
Maya stelae. The most famous example of an inscribed stela leading to increased understanding is the
Rosetta Stone, which led to the breakthrough allowing
Egyptian hieroglyphs to be read. An informative stele of
Tiglath-Pileser III is preserved in the
British Museum. Two steles built into the walls of a church are major documents relating to the
Etruscan language. Standing stones (
menhirs), set up without inscriptions from
Libya in
North Africa to
Scotland, were monuments of pre-literate
Megalithic cultures in the
Late Stone Age. The
Pictish stones of Scotland, often intricately carved, date from between the 6th and 9th centuries. An
obelisk is a specialized kind of stele. The
Insular high crosses of
Ireland and
Great Britain are
specialized steles.
Totem poles of North and South America that are made out of stone may also be considered a specialized type of stele.
Gravestones, typically with inscribed name and often with inscribed
epitaph, are among the most common types of stele seen in Western culture. Most recently, in the
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in
Berlin, the architect
Peter Eisenman created a field of some 2,700 blank steles. The memorial is meant to be read not only as the field but also as an erasure of data that refer to memory of the Holocaust.
Egypt Egyptian steles (or Stelae, Books of Stone) have been found dating as far back as the
First Dynasty of Egypt. These vertical slabs of stone are used as tombstones, for religious usage, and to mark boundaries, and are most commonly made of limestone and sandstone, or harder kinds of stone such as granite or diorite, but wood was also used in later times.), or erected beside tombs. Others stood in isolated positions, such as the
Kelashin Stele, and had a commemorative function or served as boundary markers. Although sometimes plain, most bore a cuneiform inscription that would detail the stele's function or the reasons for its erection. The stele from Van's "western niche" contained annals of the reign of
Sarduri II, with events detailed yearly and with each year separated by the phrase "For the God
Haldi I accomplished these deeds". Some scholars have suggested Urartian steles may have influenced the development of the Armenian
khachkar.
Greece at the
Archaeological Museum of Corfu Greek funerary markers, especially in Attica, had a long and evolutionary history in Athens. From public and extravagant processional funerals to different types of pottery used to store ashes after cremation, visibility has always been a large part of Ancient Greek funerary markers in Athens. Regarding stelai (Greek plural of stele), in the period of the Archaic style in Ancient Athens (600 BC) stele often showed certain archetypes of figures, such as the male athlete. Generally their figures were singular, though there are instances of two or more figures from this time period. Moving into the 6th and 5th centuries BC, Greek stelai declined and then rose in popularity again in Athens and evolved to show scenes with multiple figures, often of a family unit or a household scene. One such notable example is the Stele of Hegeso. Typically grave stelai are made of marble and carved in relief, and like most Ancient Greek sculpture they were vibrantly painted. For more examples of stelai, the Getty Museum's published Catalog of Greek Funerary Sculpture is a valuable resource
China ''-born
Yan Temple Renovation Stele dated Year 9 of
Zhizheng era in
Yuan dynasty (AD 1349), in
Qufu, Shandong, China . Steles (Chinese:
bēi 碑) have been a major medium of stone inscription in China, the earliest examples dating from the
Qin dynasty. Chinese steles are generally rectangular stone tablets upon which
Chinese characters are carved
intaglio with a funerary, commemorative, or edifying text. They can commemorate talented writers and officials, inscribe poems, portraits, or maps, and frequently contain the
calligraphy of famous historical figures. Chinese steles from before the
Tang dynasty are rare: there are a handful from before the
Qin dynasty, roughly a dozen from the
Western Han, 160 from the
Eastern Han, and several hundred from the
Wei,
Jin,
Northern and Southern, and
Sui dynasties. During the Han dynasty, tomb inscriptions (,
mùzhì) containing biographical information on deceased people began to be written on stone tablets rather than wooden ones. One of the most famous mountain steles is the high stele at
Mount Tai with the personal calligraphy of
Emperor Xuanzong of Tang commemorating his imperial sacrifices there in 725.
Horn of Africa The
Horn of Africa contains many stelae. In the highlands of
Ethiopia and
Eritrea, the
Axumites and
D'mt before them erected a number of large stelae, which served a religious purpose in pre-Christian times. One of these granite columns is the largest such structure in the world, standing at 90 feet. Additionally,
Tiya is one of nine megalithic pillar sites in the central Gurage Zone of Ethiopia. As of 1997, 118 stele were reported in the area. Along with those in the Hadiya Zone, other Sidamo and Konso stele have been theorized by historians to be of
Aksumite origin or related through a common regional culture. The stelae at Tiya and other areas in central Ethiopia are similar to those on the route between
Djibouti City and Loyada in
Djibouti. In the latter area, there are a number of anthropomorphic and phallic stelae, which are associated with graves of rectangular shape flanked by vertical slabs. The Djibouti-Loyada stelae are of uncertain age, and some of them are adorned with a T-shaped symbol. Near the ancient northwestern town of
Amud in
Somalia, whenever an old site had the prefix
Aw in its name (such as the ruins of
Awbare and
Awbube), it denoted the final resting place of a local saint. Surveys by A.T. Curle in 1934 on several of these important ruined cities recovered various
artefacts, such as
pottery and
coins, which point to a medieval period of activity at the tail end of the Adal Sultanate's reign. Burial sites near
Burao likewise feature old stelae. ==Notable steles==