Quotes About Steles

Similar in some respects to the Ravenna sarcophagi are stone crosses found in Armenia and Georgia. Although the earliest date from the ninth century, such crosses continue to be made into the modern period. These memorial steles, called khachkars, typically display crosses enclosed within interlacing designs of vines, fruit, and flowers. The cross's arms generally flare and are tipped with buds. Only a few of the later examples show a corpus on the cross.

The wash of so many peoples had left behind a complex detritus: ruined strongholds; graves and tombs; steles carved with cryptic glyphs: songs, dances, turns of speech, fragments of dialect, place-names; ceremonies of purport now forgotten, but with lingering flavour. There were dozens of cults and religions, diverse except that, in every case, a caste of priests interceded between laity and divinity.