Really.
The following are a few hundred years old and from a Protestant cemetery in Hessen.
After serving as gravestones, they had been reused as steppingstones in a a stairway leading up to the cemetery.
The grandfather of my host had "reclaimed" them and they were now displayed along the path of the cemetery.
Each stone displayed the family members of the person who had originally been buried under the stone. Imagine the man and the woman standing next to each other on this particular stone with seven sons to the left and three daughters to the right.
A small cross above the head of one of the figures indicated who had died.
This was a smaller family - the parents with two sons and one daughter.
Here the parents with their three sons and one daughter.
This man had been a stonemason, and if I remember right, the baby in the middle had died as a baby. Nine children altogether.
Family portraits from long ago - in stone.
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