Stela N, depicting King K'ac Yipyaj Chan K'awiil ("Smoke Shell"), as drawn by *Frederick Catherwood* in 1839
A **stele** is a stone or wooden slab, mostly taller than it is wide, that is built so that people will remember something when they look at it. 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.

History and function
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Stelae were also used as territorial markers, as the boundary stelae of Akhenaten at Amarna, or to commemorate military victories. 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 and Maya. 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 to memory of the Holocaust.

Notable individual stelae
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* Code of Hammurabi
* Rosetta Stone

Gallery
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* Ancient Egyptian funerary steleAncient Egyptian funerary stele
* Healing stele of Horus-(a Cippus of Horus).  Ptolemaic dynasty, c. 305-30 BC.Healing stele of Horus-(a Cippus of Horus). Ptolemaic dynasty, c. 305-30 BC.
* Sueno's Stone in Forres, ScotlandSueno's Stone in Forres, Scotland
* Maya stela, QuiriguaMaya stela, Quirigua
* Kildalton Cross 800 AD Islay, ScotlandKildalton Cross 800 AD Islay, Scotland
* Cantabrian Stele 200 BC Cantabria, SpainCantabrian Stele 200 BC Cantabria, Spain
* The Rosetta Stone in the British MuseumThe Rosetta Stone in the British Museum
* 3-D view of Rosetta Stone-Left side3-D view of Rosetta Stone-Left side
* A Buddhist Stele from China, Northern Wei period, built in the early 6th centuryA Buddhist Stele from China, Northern Wei period, built in the early 6th century

Related pages
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* Rune stone

Bibliography
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* John Boardman ed. *The Cambridge Ancient History*, Part 1, 2nd Edition, ISBN 9780521224963
* Christopher A. Pool, *Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica*, Cambridge University Press 2007 (ISBN 9780521783125)
* Karen E. Till, *The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place*, University of Minnesota Press 2005

Footnotes and references
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1. ↑  from Greek: στήλη, *stēlē*, English pronunciation: /ˈstiːli/; plural: **stelae**, Greek: στῆλαι, *stēlai*, English pronunciation: /ˈstiːlaɪ/; also found: Latinised singular **stela** and Anglicised plural **steles**
2. ↑  *Memoirs* By Egypt Exploration Society Archaeological Survey of Egypt 1908, p.
19
3. ↑  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)
4. ↑  Pool, *op.cit.*, p.265
5. ↑  Pool, *op.cit.*, p.277
6. ↑  Till, *op.cit.*, p.168

Other websites
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to ***Steles***.

* Funerary Stela Archived 2009-04-10 at the Wayback Machine