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.
A pentagram is a regular five-pointed star polygon, formed from the diagonal line segments of a convex regular pentagon. Drawing a circle around the five points creates a similar symbol referred to as the pentacle, which is used widely by Wiccans and in paganism, or as a sign of life and connections. The word "pentagram" refers only to the five-pointed star, not the surrounding circle of a pentacle.
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A stele, or occasionally stela when derived from Latin, is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected in the ancient world as a monument. The surface of the stele often has text, ornamentation, or both. These may be inscribed, carved in relief, or painted.
The lauburu is an ancient hooked cross with four comma-shaped heads and the most widely known traditional symbol of the Basque Country and the Basque people. In the past, it has also been associated with the Galicians, Illyrians and Asturians.
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The first coat of arms of Montreal was designed by Jacques Viger, the first mayor of Montreal, and adopted in 1833 by the city councillors. Modifications were made some one hundred five years later and adopted on 21 March 1938, and again on 13 September 2017, resulting in the version currently in use. The coat of arms was the only city emblem representing Montreal until 1981, when a stylized logo was developed for common daily use, reserving the coat of arms for ceremonial occasions.
Hex signs are a form of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, related to fraktur, found in the Fancy Dutch tradition in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Barn paintings, usually in the form of "stars in circles", began to appear on the landscape in the early 19th century and became widespread decades later when commercial ready-mixed paint became readily available. By the 1950s commercialized hex signs, aimed at the tourist market, became popular and these often include stars, compass roses, stylized birds known as distelfinks, hearts, tulips, or a tree of life. Two schools of thought exist on the meaning of hex signs. One school ascribes a talismanic nature to the signs; the other sees them as purely decorative. Both schools recognize that there are sometimes superstitions associated with certain hex sign themes and neither ascribes strong magical power to them. The Amish do not use hex signs.
A rosette is a round, stylized flower design.
Jewelry of the Etruscan civilization existed in several eras.
Atalburu is the name given to the lintel above the main entrance of traditional Basque houses.
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.
The tradition of egg decoration in Slavic cultures originated in pagan times, and was transformed by the process of religious syncretism into the Christian Easter egg. Over time, many new techniques were added. Some versions of these decorated eggs have retained their pagan symbolism, while others have added Christian symbols and motifs.
The Archaeological Museum of Eretria is a museum in Eretria, in the Euboea regional unit of Central Greece.
Colombian military decorations date back as far as the founding of the country. An early decoration was the Cruz de Boyacá that was awarded to the generals who led their forces to victory in the Battle of Boyacá in 1819. This early decoration lives on today as an incarnation of the highest order presented by the Colombian state. There is one decoration higher, but it is only awarded for military conflicts in defence of Colombia. Other than military decorations, Colombia presents decorations on behalf of the National Government, decorations for the National Police, and decorations from the Congress of Colombia.
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.
The hexafoil is a design with six-fold dihedral symmetry composed from six vesica piscis lenses arranged radially around a central point, often shown enclosed in a circumference of another six lenses. It is also sometimes known as a "daisy wheel". A second, quite different, design is also sometimes referred to by this name; see alternate symbol.
Monuments in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo are tombs and funerary monuments ranging from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Since its rebuilding in the 1470s by Pope Sixtus IV the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo was one of the favourite burial places for members of the papal aristocracy, clergy and literati. Foreign artists were also buried in the church due to its location near their favourite quarter in Rione Campo Marzio. The high number of tombs and monuments makes the basilica a whole museum of sculpture as Jacob Burckhardt phrased it in his famous guide of Italian art in 1855. Besides the tombs in the side chapels and the choir there are many other funeral monuments in the aisles and the transept. During the centuries several monuments were demolished and others were relocated to give place to newer ones.
Palmyrene funerary reliefs are almost 4,000 busts on decorative slabs closing burial niches inside underground tombs, produced in Palmyra over three centuries from the middle of the first century BC. It is the largest corpus of portrait sculpture in the Roman world outside Rome and the largest collection of funerary representations from one place in the classical world.