From the earliest times of Bosnian Kingdom the nobility was buried in large necropolises near roads with graves marked by monumental tombstones (stećak). A Stećak was sometimes engraved with reliefs showing all sorts of motifs, from figurative to symbols, and sometimes writings in Bosnian Cyrillic. They are strongly linked to the Bosnian Church and most of the motifs are derived from its particular belief system, although some are also derived from Romanesque (crosses, arcades with semi-circular arches, son, half-moon etc.) and Gothic (arcades with sharp arches, knight riders, shields, swords, lilies etc.) art of the West.