"stela" is an acceptable spelling of a word in written English
Stelae (the plural form of stela) are typically used to refer to a monument or stone slab that is inscribed with text or artwork and used to commemorate an event or person. For example, you might say, "The ancient town had several stelae placed around it, detailing the history of the rulers who had once lived there."
The island's capital, Vila do Porto, founded in the 1430s, is the oldest town in the Azores; it has a 15th-century parish church and a commemorative stela, dedicated in 1432 to "the discoverers".
In the old Babylonian period, Hammurabi's famous law code was engraved on a tall diorite stela; at its top stands Hammurabi, who saw himself as the "good shepherd," facing the sun god Shamash.
Another famous stela is the Lhasa rdo-ring (Long Stone of Lhasa), which stands in front of the main entrance to the Jo-khang temple in Tibet, regarded as the holiest of holy places and the centre of Tibet.
A key document in the Eastern theory is the inscription on a stone grave stela found on the island of Lemnos near the coast of Anatolia that shows remarkable lexical and structural similarities with the Etruscan language.
The earliest examples are simple and architecturally undemanding; later a suitable room, the tomb-chapel, was provided for the stela (now incorporated in a false door) in the tomb superstructure.
In 709 bc Sargon II of Assyria erected a stela at Citium recording the fact that seven Cypriot kings had paid him homage; subsequent Assyrian documents mention 11 tributary kingdoms: the seven already cited plus Citium, Kyrenia, Tamassos, and Idalium.
The representation of a mosaic mask on a stela (an upright, freestanding stone slab functioning as a commemorative monument) at Seibal, Guatemala (590 ce), established the early use of the technique in Maya territory, but it became best known from the few specimens surviving from the time of the Aztec empire (c. 1376 1519) and from descriptions of others left by the Spanish conquerors.
Otherwise, with two weeks in Ethiopia, you can linger over the journey to Harar and also take in Lalibela's rock churches, Gondar's royal remains and Axum's ancient stelae columns - the spectacular highlights of Ethiopia's northern Historic Route.
Today it abuts the 2,711 undulating stelae of the Holocaust memorial.
His artists created many statues and stelae.
Copán is particularly noted for the friezes on some of its other buildings and the portrait sculptures on its many stelae.
