Word: stelae
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...third and innermost chamber, the sanctuary where only priests and an occasional petitioner entered, is bare except for a stela representing the two brothers with Osiris and Isis. A concealed chamber behind it may have contained the embalmed bodies of the brothers or, as some suggest, may have been used by a hidden priest to make oracular pronouncements to impress the faithful. But few of them would ever have heard him. For unlike a Christian church, the Egyptian temple was not designed for worshipers to gather to pray. Rather, it was a house built for the god himself...
Finding their newly discovered stela too heavy to cart away intact, the thieves cut it into six pieces with chain saws. Then, along with the rest of their booty, they load the chunks onto burros and head for the border. Within days their contraband enters the flourishing black market in pre-Columbian antiquities, to be bought by rich collectors in the U.S., Western Europe or Japan...
Deep in Guatemala's Petén rain forest, five men dig into a curious mound in the earth. They suspect that an ancient tomb lies somewhere beneath it, and before long, their hunch is confirmed. Just below the surface, they uncover a huge limestone slab, or stela, inscribed with Mayan symbols. A little deeper they find the tomb, filled with jade and alabaster jewelry, brilliantly colored ceramic platters and other priceless antiquities created by Mayan craftsmen long before Columbus reached the shores of the New World...