Hilarri (from Basque hil 'dead' and harri 'stone') is the name given to disk-shaped funerary steles that are typical of the Basque Country.
These funerary steles present a disc-shaped head facing the rising sun on a trapezoidal stand. They belong to an old tradition throughout all of the Western Mediterranean, which includes parts of Europe and North Africa, but today they are mainly found in the Basque Country.
The disc may be decorated by:
A smaller rosette, a Christian cross or a text may be added on the stand.
Geometric symbols are regularly distributed on the disc within 4 or 8 circle sectors. The quarters are often delimited by a cross as:
They may be very simple or well worked. Sometimes, a diagonal secondary cross completes the figure.
Each sector is decorated with various small decorative symbols such as stars, moons, potent crosses or rosettes. They may be different in each sector. Sometimes, depictions of tools point out the trade of the deceased, whose name is seldom mentioned. Stylized hands open upwards may also be found.
Many steles are decorated by single rosettes. In this case the order of symmetry is often 6. The most frequent figures are:
Some figures are designed to give an idea of rotation, generally clockwise, a sense which is often analyzed as positive. The most popular figures are :
One Navarrese hilarri presents a kind of lauburu made of four walking legs. This motive cannot be considered as usual in the Basque Country.
Some more specific figures can be encountered as:
They are all identified with Christ as the sun rising after Resurrection, evident also in Basque church symbols and the imagery of Loyola's Jesuit Order.
The surrounding of the disc is often decorated, giving an impression of a shining sun.
Many innovative ornamentations can be observed in modern hilarris. As an example, in Zuberoa, the traditional song "Orhiko txoria" (the bird of Orhy) has led to many representations of a bird flying towards this emblematic mountain. Others have seen connections to a prehistoric solar cult arriving with the Mauri or Jentillak and related to the Egyptian Horus, consort or manifestation of the Ishtar (the star) of Fertility among the desert and Sea People.
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The coat of arms of Cantabria has a rectangular shield, round in base and the field is party en fess. In field azure, a tower or crenellated and masoned, port and windows azure, to its right a ship in natural colours that with its bow has broken a chain sable going from the tower to the dexter flank of the shield. At the base, sea waves argent and azure, all surmounted in chief by two male heads, severed and haloed. In field gules, a disc-shaped stele with geometric ornaments of the kind of the Cantabrian steles of Barros or Lombera. The crest is a closed royal crown, a circle of jeweled gold, made up of eight rosettes in the shape of acanthus leaves, only five visible, interpolated with pearls, and with half-arches topped with pearls raising from each leaf and converging in an orb azure, with submeridian and equator or, topped with cross or. The crown, covered in gules.
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A Daunian stele is a type of stone funerary monument constructed by the Daunians, an Iapygian tribe which inhabited Apulia in classical antiquity. Daunian stelae were made from the end of the 8th century BC to the 6th century BC. They consist of a parallelepiped-shaped plate with a protrusion on the upper side and decoration on all four sides. Sizes vary between 40 and 130 cm in height, and consequently, between 20 and 80 cm in width while the thickness is between 3 and 12 cm.
The Cantabrian stelae are monolithic stone disks of different sizes, whose early precedents were carved in the last centuries before the romanization of Cantabria in northern Iberian Peninsula. Cantabrian stelae include swastikas, triskeles, crosses, spirals, helixes, warriors or pre-Roman funerary representations among their usual ornamentation. The most famous is called Estela de Barros which can be visited in the Parque de las Estelas in the town of Barros, in Los Corrales de Buelna. This stele is part of the current coat of arms of Cantabria and the meaning of tetraskelion would be related to solar worship. The Barros stele giant size represents the main difference to the smaller stelae found in other parts of northern Spain. In addition to the Estela de Barros, we can see another larger, fragmented stele in the Parque de las Estelas.
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