Inscriptions on stone tablets or stone stelae are a very important source of historians as well as for students of calligraphy. There are four different types of stone inscriptions (beiming 碑銘) that can be discerned: Inscriptions made by emperors to eternalize proclamations, inscriptions made by private persons on tomb stones (tomb stone inscriptions muzhiming 墓誌銘) or commemorative steles, commemorative inscriptions made by institutions, and inscriptions reproducing the content of books, like the Confucian classics (the so-called shijing 石經 "stone classics") or Buddhist sutras. Inscriptions were also made on rocks and cliffs. To be continued...