Stela

A stela is a stone or wooden slab erected for funerary or commemorative purposes, most usually decorated with the names and titles of the deceased inscribed, carved in relief or painted onto the slab. They were widely used in ancient Greece and Egypt, as well as by Mesoamerican civilisations, notably the Maya. The huge number of stelae surviving from ancient Egypt constitute one of the largest and most significant sources of information on that civilisation. The word derives from the Greek stele, "standing block".

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The term stela is also used in botany to refer to the central cylinder in the stems and roots of vascular plants.