About Stele
A symbol-driven mythology archive
What is Stele?
Stele is a mythology archive built for exploration, not reading. Instead of long-form articles or wiki-style entries, Stele presents ancient mythological traditions as structured, interconnected data — deities, heroes, creatures, concepts, and the myths that bind them.
The name references the ancient stone monuments used to record laws, victories, and divine decrees. Like those monuments, Stele aims to present mythological knowledge as structured inscriptions — clear, enduring, and navigable.
Approach
Stele is not a wiki and not a blog. Every entity in the archive is represented as structured data: a name, a type, a set of domains, variant spellings, poetic introductions, symbolic associations, and relationships to other entities. Myths are presented as narrative blocks with typed participants, themes, and scholarly annotations.
This structure-first approach enables meaningful exploration. An interactive relationship graph reveals connections between entities. Domain-based navigation groups entities by sphere of influence. Cross-references between myths and their participants create a navigable web of mythological knowledge.
Sources & Accuracy
Stele draws from established academic sources across each realm — Assyriology and ancient Near Eastern studies for Mesopotamia, and Egyptology for Ancient Egypt. Entity descriptions, relationships, and mythological narratives are informed by scholarly consensus where available, with variant traditions noted where they diverge.
Stele is a creative and educational project — not a peer-reviewed academic resource. While care is taken to represent traditions accurately, the primary goal is atmospheric exploration rather than exhaustive scholarship.
Data Model
Entities
Deities, heroes, creatures, concepts, and places. Each entity has a type, domains (spheres of influence), variant names, symbolic associations, and relationships to other entities.
Myths
Narrative accounts structured as typed blocks — prose, quotes, and scholarly notes. Each myth has themes, a summary, and a list of participants with defined roles.
Relationships
Typed connections between entities: family, consort, rival, ally, servant, and general associations. These form the edges of the interactive relationship graph.
Realms
Cultural groupings that scope the archive. Each realm (Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt) contains its own entities, myths, domains, and relationship network with a distinct visual theme.
Technical
Stele is built with SvelteKit for server-side rendering and fast hydration. The frontend uses CSS custom properties for realm-specific theming, GSAP for scroll-driven animations, tsParticles and Three.js for atmospheric visual effects, and D3.js for the force-directed relationship graph.
The backend uses Fastify with Drizzle ORM over PostgreSQL. All content is managed through structured seed scripts — there is no CMS. The entire stack runs in Docker containers.
Every page is server-rendered with semantic HTML, structured data (JSON-LD), Open Graph metadata, and canonical URLs for search engine and answer engine discoverability.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Stele?
Stele is a visually rich, symbol-driven mythology archive that presents ancient mythological traditions as structured, interconnected data. It features deities, heroes, creatures, concepts, locations, and the myths that connect them, with an emphasis on atmospheric exploration rather than long-form articles.
What mythologies does Stele cover?
Stele currently covers Mesopotamian mythology (Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian traditions) and Ancient Egyptian mythology. Each realm includes over 30 entities (deities, heroes, creatures, and concepts) and 5-8 major myths with scholarly annotations. The architecture supports additional cultural realms for future expansion.
What are the entity types in Stele?
Stele categorizes mythological figures into six types: Deity (gods and goddesses), Hero (mortal or semi-divine figures), Creature (monsters and supernatural beings), Primordial (cosmic beings that predate creation), Location (sacred places and mythological realms), and Concept (abstract forces and divine institutions).
What relationship types connect entities?
Entities are connected through seven relationship types: Parent (familial descent), Child (inverse of parent), Consort (divine partnerships), Rival (opposing forces or conflicts), Slain By (combat and defeat), Ally (companions and allies), and Associated (general mythological connections such as patron deity to city).
What sources does Stele use?
Stele draws from established academic sources including works by Stephanie Dalley, Samuel Noah Kramer, Thorkild Jacobsen, Jean Bottero (Mesopotamia), and Richard Wilkinson, Erik Hornung, Geraldine Pinch, Miriam Lichtheim (Egypt). Digital resources include the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) and the ORACC project. Each entity and myth page lists its specific academic references.
How is the relationship graph generated?
The interactive relationship graph uses D3.js force-directed simulation to visualize connections between mythological entities. Nodes represent entities (color-coded by type) and edges represent typed relationships. The graph is filterable by domain and fully navigable.