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| | Articles - Stele (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03) |
 | | A stele (or stela) is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected for funerary or commemorative purposes, most usually decorated with the names and titles of the deceased or living—inscribed, carved in relief (bas relief, sunken relief, raised relief, etc), or painted onto the slab. |
 | | They were widely used in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Egypt, and, quite independently, in China and some Buddhist cultures (see the Nestorian Stele), and, more surely independently, by Mesoamerican civilisations, notably the Olmec and Maya. |
 | | 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. |
| www.worldhammock.com /articles/Stele (356 words) |
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