STELE (= stela, στήλη, στήλες, -ίδος, dim. στήληδος, root sta, cf. στήλη = I erect). — The term was used by the Greeks for any upright stone, a burial marker, a boundary stone, and also for those columns or stone slabs displayed publicly upon which laws, notices, decrees, treaties, and records of notable events were inscribed.
More specifically, these were thin, tall stone or marble slabs, slightly tapered from bottom to top, set upright and secured on a base, erected over tombs bearing the name of the deceased. They generally featured an architectural crowning element in the form of a floral and leafy motif (ἀνθέμια) in relief or paint, or a pediment with acroteria. The surface of the stele could contain relief figures relating to the life of the deceased; a very popular subject was the deceased’s farewell to his loved ones. Closely related to stelae, especially in Attica, were small marble funerary columns with inscriptions, crowned by an acanthus-leaf capital; these were often adorned with ribbons and wreaths.
A Greek funerary stele is preserved in the museum of the Abbey of Grottaferrata, depicting in profile a nude youth seated on a stool, engaged in reading a scroll; beneath the stool a panther is crouched. Famous is the Rosetta Stele, discovered by the Napoleonic expedition in Egypt, bearing a trilingual inscription that enabled Champollion to decipher hieroglyphs (1821). The term “stele” is also applied to the well-known rectangular tufa slab discovered in the Roman Forum in 1899, which bears on each of its sides and on a beveled corner an archaic inscription with sacred ritual formulae from the 7th–6th centuries BCE.