As public monuments, the stelae follow the conventions of an artistic language that was invented in order to make public declarations.
He believed that the glyphs, ornaments, idols, stelae, and altars were built up of numerical symbols and dedicated to number worship.
On stelae, the ruler was shown holding military or ritual objects.
It is difficult in those cases to claim that the absence of stelae during a particular period is indicative of anything meaningful.
One is oral tradition, the other is his stelae.
His description suggests the stelae were lying on their sides in the sixteenth century.
They are tall, free-standing, pillar-like stelae with tapering form, usually with a rectangular cross-section and pictorial narrative scenes carved on all four sides in registers.
If individual soldiers or battalions are mentioned, they are in smaller script, or they are on stelae that do not mention a commanding superior.
