stele

   A common form of monument used across the ancient world, including the nation-states and empires of Mesopotamia, to commemorate an important event, ruler, or decree. A typical stele (or stela) consisted of a slab of stone, or occasionally metal, covered by written inscriptions, images sculpted in relief, or both.

   Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian rulers often set up stelae to mark the farthest extent of their conquests or to commemorate their military victories. But many other stelae celebrated peacetime events or accomplishments. one of the more famous of these is a 4-ton (3.6t) stele of black diorite (a hard stone) on which the Babylonian king Hammurabi carved his law code. At the top of the slab a sculpted relief shows Hammurabi facing, and supposedly receiving the laws from, Shamash, the sun god. Below these figures the laws are inscribed in some thirty-five hundred lines of Babylonian cuneiform.

   Another well-known stele was erected in the 2500s b.c. by a ruler of the Sumerian city of Lagash - Ur-Nanshe - to commemorate his establishment of a new temple. (Ur-Nanshe's stele is presently on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris.) The Assyrian ruler Ashurnasirpal erected a large stele to celebrate the completion of his palace in about 879 b.c., a monument that also records a huge banquet the king held for his builders and architects. Still another famous Mesopotamian stele is the so-called Stele of the Vultures (also in the Louvre), which shows soldiers from La-gash defeating troops from the rival city of Umma.

   See also: Code of Hammurabi; Stele of the Vultures; writing materials