Having been for four centuries – from the end of the Bosnian Middle Ages to the early decades of the 19th century – left to oblivion, human destruction and "dying" in nature, the Bosnian and Hum tomb markers stećci aroused interest first of travel writers and inquisitive persons visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since the foundation of the Museum Society of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1884 and the establishment of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina thereafter in 1888, i.e. from the first systematic attempts to scientifically evaluate the stećci, these Bosnian and Hum mediaeval tombstones have been a subject of multidisciplinary investigations of both local and foreign experts, from historians and archaeologists to art historians, ethnologists, linguists, folklorists and scholars in other fields. Neither poets' nor painters' imagination has remained indifferent to their secretive monumentality, producing ever since the most fantastic perceptions of their origin and their artistic and religious purposes. Relying heavily on the results achieved to date, this monograph is an attempt to make a step further placing the stećak phenomenon into the context of European sepulchral art, or better to say into the context of mediaeval talk about death.