The lunar symbolism of kerb stone 78 at Knowth

This is kerb stone 78 at Knowth, located not far from the entrance to the western passage. It is one of 127 kerb stones at Knowth, of which 90 have megalithic art. But what do these symbols represent, if anything? Are they merely art for art’s sake?

Kerb stone 78 at Knowth. Picture © Anthony Murphy

American artist Martin Brennan published a book called The Stars and the Stones in 1984, having studied and drawn the megalithic art on almost all of the known decorated prehistoric stone sites in Ireland. Brennan’s overall supposition was that the ancient engravings at Neolithic sites such as Newgrange, Knowth, Loughcrew, and many others, were related to astronomy. His book was later republished as The Stones of Time.

The main plank of Brennan’s hypothesis was that the megalithic mounds and art are “interconnected, sophisticated calendar devices”. The summary on the back cover of the book says:

At critical times of the year, the rising or setting sun projects beams of light into the inner chambers of the mounds, illuminating specific images carved on the stones. Those images – seemingly abstract wheels, spirals, and wavy lines – suggest provocative new insights into their makers’ understanding of celestial cycles and the importance of those cycles in human affairs.

Brennan’s interpretation of kerb stone 78 (which he labelled as stone NW4 in his own personally devised numbering convention) is that it contains a diagrammatic representation of the moon through the use of what he calls “bijections or one-to-one correspondences with the phases of the moon”.

Brennan suggests that lunar imagery predominates on the kerb stones on the western portion of the great kerb of Knowth, where the crescents and arcs that dominate the imagery were generated by an interest in the moon and the division of time long before the age of mechanical clocks.

The crescents, waved lines and circles on Kerb 78 represent the phases of the moon, according to Brennan.

A ribbon-like development of the wavy line extends from the central image. The line follows a sequence shaped to fit the lunar month. The wavy line is transformed into crescents and then a full circle or full moon on the fourteenth count. A line divides the rest of the month, towards the end of which the crescents revert to the wavy line at the last quarter, defining a month of 30 days.

He proposed a second way of ordering the month using a different interpretation of the symbols. The top line counts from the first day of the moon as far as the seventeenth day, which is the day upon which the moon begins to wane. The sequence continues at the bottom of the stone, as far as day 27 and the last visible crescent. A final three-count wave represents the three invisible days of the moon.

Brennan's alternative lunar month count for kerb stone 78, Knowth.

The number 17 is often treated with special significance in connection with the moon, he says. "It may have had significance in a calendar of ritual. Usually it is the seventeenth phase of the moon which appears on the horizon and projects a beam of light into the mounds."

Brennan’s work is not without its detractors, and the analysis and categorisation of megalithic art has been an area of debate and dispute. Some scholars argue that the megalithic art is abstract and non-representative. Brennan, however, develops a comprehensive thesis around the astronomical symbolism and, coupled with his team’s important discoveries at Loughcrew and Dowth*, it all makes for a fascinating interpretation.

Kerb stone 78 at Knowth.

* Brennan, along with Jack Roberts and others, discovered that the southern passage at Dowth is aligned so that light from the setting sun on winter solstice reaches the stones at the rear of its circular chamber. They also discovered that Cairn T at Loughcrew is aligned so that a stone with solar emblems at the rear of its chamber is bathed with sunlight at dawn on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

Further reading

Knowth: archaeological and astronomical legacy

Knowth's Calendar Stone
The 19-year Metonic Cycle of the moon

Anthony Murphy (Mythical Ireland) with Martin Brennan at Newgrange.

Painting with light: the three most highly decorated kerb stones at Newgrange in gorgeous detail

To celebrate the fact that the Mythical Ireland Facebook page has just passed 30,000 likes, I am revealing these three images of the most decorated kerb stones at Síd in Broga (Newgrange). The photos were taken in the pre-dawn twilight around winter solstice, with the kind permission of the Office of Public Works (OPW). In order to capture these stones in a way that has probably never been seen before, I used an old technique called "painting with light".

Kerb stone 52 at Newgrange, which is diametrically opposite the entrance kerb stone, K1.

My favourite of the three is the above photo of kerb 52 (K52), which can be found at the very rear of the mound, diametrically opposite the entrance kerb stone (K1). I'd only ever previously been able to photograph this stone in daylight. And while I have a couple of nice photos of it, I always longed to use the painting with light technique on it. The image was captured by putting the camera on a tripod and keeping the shutter open for about 15 seconds. During this time, I was "painting" the stone with light using a small LED torch, first from the right and then from the left. The result is an image that I've been waiting for years to achieve. I hope you like it. I have speculated that it contains representations of stars we know today as Orion's Belt and Sirius. At the time of the construction of Newgrange, Sirius was visible from its interior chamber as it transited the roof box.

Spirals on the entrance kerb stone at Newgrange, kerb 1 (K1).

The entrance kerb stone at Newgrange is one of the most famous artefacts from the ancient world, and its design has been photographed perhaps millions of times over the decades. One of the OPW guides at Newgrange regularly tells visitors that "it's the most photographed stone in the world, after Mick Jagger"! Sometimes, especially in midwinter, the evening sunlight catches this stone so that it is illuminated at a very shallow angle, which is the perfect angle for bringing out the relief. I have in previous years been able to get a nice photo using remote flash to achieve the same result. However, I still think that the above image, painted with light during dark twilight, is better than anything I would have achieved during the day.

Kerb stone 67 with its double spiral, triangles and lozenges.

The other of the three most decorated kerb stones at Newgrange, and perhaps the least famous, is this one, kerb 67. It is remarkable that of the 97 huge greywackle slabs that form the kerb around Newgrange, only three are highly decorated. There are carvings on plenty of others, but K1, K52 and K67 are the only stones that feature designs over most of their visible surface. Fascinatingly, there are some stones that are decorated on their rear side, where the carvings cannot be seen.

The 12 days of Solstice - Day 8 - megalithic art on kerb stone 52, one of three highly decorated kerbs

This is kerb stone 52 at Newgrange, which lies at the rear of the mound, exactly opposite the main entrance kerb stone. It is one of just three highly decorated kerb stones at Newgrange. The others are kerb 1, the kerb immediately in front of the entrance to the passage, and kerb stone 67, on the northeastern side of the kerb.

As you can imagine, interpretation of the symbols carved into stone at Newgrange and its sister monuments over 5,000 years ago is necessarily subjective, and there is a wide range of theories as to what various emblems and designs on different stones mean. My own view is that there's no great harm engaging in speculation - however, one has to be careful about ensuring that the archaeological evidence is not disputed by your theory. For instance, one gentleman I encountered some years ago insisted that symbols on a passage stone at Cairn T, Loughcrew, were figures including the biblical partriarch Jeremiah, sailing on a boat to Ireland. This same individual insisted that Newgrange is an Iron Age construction, and all the archaeologists are wrong about its date!

My own theory (and because it's just a theory, I could be wholly wrong about it) is that it might contain symbols representing Orion and Sirius. At the time Newgrange was built, around 3150BC, the declination of Sirius was -23º 2' 43.1". This means that its rising position would make it visible from the chamber of Newgrange, out through the roofbox. A prostrate observer on the floor of the chamber could have seen this "dog star" (or whatever it might have been called back then) night after night at certain times of the year. However, due to the effects of precession of the equinoxes, a slow wobble of the earth's axis, Sirius's declination was increasing, and over the next couple of centuries it would have drifted northwards, so that it was no longer visible from the chamber.

Some of the engravings on kerb 52 could be interpreted as representations of Orion's belt and Sirius:

On the right-hand side of the stone, there are three sets of three circular holes, known in archaeological terminology as "cup marks". Each of these sets of holes is contained within a double oval-shaped cartouche. There are a number of other cup marks on the stone, the most noticeable of which is one contained inside the vertical stripe in the centre of the stone. Is this Sirius, sitting on the axis of the site, which runs through the entrance kerbstone, K1, up the passage, and out the other side of the kerb in the centre of K52?(1)

Maybe it is, maybe it's not. This is the nature of speculation. But at the very least this theory fits the astronomical evidence and does not dispute the archaeological evidence - always a good starting point!

The presence of the vertical line or stripe on this stone led archaeologists to speculate that there might be another passage behind it. Prof. Michael O'Kelly excavated an area of the mound behind this stone in search of just such a passage, but no evidence of one was found.

References:
(1) Murphy, Anthony and Moore, Richard (2008) [2006], Island of the Setting Sun: In Search of Ireland's Ancient Astronomers, Liffey Press, p.178.

Winter sunlight does some beautiful things with the ancient megalithic art on the stones at Dowth

I've been able to spend a few mornings at Dowth recently. It's one of three of the great monuments of Brú na Bóinne (the others being Newgrange and Knowth), but is the least visited of the trio. Personally, I'm glad that Dowth retains this almost-forgotten status. It is not on the official tour. It is wild and overgrown, and many of its secrets are in the deep slumber of many centuries. I like it that way. It's a lovely place to spend time. Despite the fact that it is named after darkness (Irish Dubhadh), it presents a very interesting notion - the belief that we must experience the darkness of the longest night before the new year dawns.

Winter sunrise at Dowth, the third great passage-tomb of the Brú na Bóinne complex.

While it near neighbour Newgrange is famous for its winter solstice sunrise alignment, Dowth's alignment to the sunset on the shortest day is less well known. Discovered (rediscovered) in 1980 by Martin Brennan and Jack Roberts, it was studied in detail over the course of a number of winters by Anne Marie Moroney, who published a lovely little book about it called Dowth: Winter Sunsets.

While the focus at Dowth is undoubtedly centered around winter sunset, there is something really beautiful that happens just after the sunrise on these short days of midwinter. The very well-known kerb stone 51 at Dowth, more famously referred to as the Stone of the Seven Suns (named so by Martin Brennan), is gloriously lit up by the warm luster of the midwinter sun. For about an hour after sunrise, these ancient solar symbols are highlighted in a dramatic fashion by the acute angle of the low sun. As a photographer who has spent many years photographing this stone under various lighting conditions, I can safely say that I have never seen them so impressively and dramatically in relief. It's quite striking. Below are a couple of photos showing some of the megalithic carvings, which are thought to be up to 5,500 years old, lit up by the winter sun.

Some of the solar emblems on the Seven Suns Stone lit up by the low winter sun.

The megalithic art is highlighted in dramatic and pristine fashion by the acute angle of sunlight.

The Stone of the Seven Suns is on the eastern side of the great mound of Dowth. Curiously, over on the southwestern side, the entrance stone to the southern chamber is also lit up by the morning sun in winter time. This is due to the alignment of the stone, which is orientated roughly northwest-southeast. There are two large cup holes on the stone, referred to by some as 'Lucy's Eyes'. There is also some worn megalithic art, which appears to be part of a spiral. A good bit of the stone is still buried beneath the ground - only the top third or quarter is visible above the surface.

The spiral and cup marks on the entrance kerb. I added flash to this one because the sunlight was a bit watery.

For a place that is named after darkness, the sun plays a big role at Dowth. It penetrates the southern chamber at midwinter, as we know. Until recent centuries, it probably also shone into the northern chamber around the time of Samhain and Imbolc sunsets (November/February). And there may be undiscovered passageways within its huge bulk. But as I said before, some of its secrets are in slumber. For now at least. And that's just the way I like it.

See more photos of Dowth.

Get up close and personal with the entrance kerb stone at Newgrange - without leaving your armchair!

This video shows the entrance kerb stone at Newgrange (known as kerb 1) in great detail, and allows you to view the carvings on the stone without actually having to be there. It was made by the Discovery Programme and the technology used to create the scan was an Artec EVA close range scanner. You can view the stone's famous triple spiral and the other Neolithic carvings in high resolution.

Modern technology is probing the ancient Boyne Valley landscape in ways that the archaeologists of the 20th century could only dream. The above video shows just one aspect of how that is taking place. People in the furthest parts of the globe can see the 5,000-year-old carvings at Newgrange without leaving their home - in fact, without even leaving their armchair.

Several views of the Seven Suns stone

On Saturday last, the eve of Summer Solstice, my son Luke and I headed out into the Boyne Valley in the hope of getting a photo of the triple conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the Moon at Newgrange. Unfortunately after the sun set a bank of cloud rolled in, obscuring the triplet before we could get any decent photos. Not to waste an opportunity for a photograph (I rarely do!), we headed to nearby Dowth, where I decided to play around with torches and flashes using my favourite stone-lighting technique – painting with light. You might have seen a previous post from the same night here.

The stone above is famously known as the Stone of the Seven Suns. It was so named by Martin Brennan, an artist and writer who made several significant discoveries about ancient astronomical alignments in Ireland. There are several theories as to what this stone might mean. It is one of just a few stones that are completely exposed. Many of Dowth's 115 kerb stones still lie either partly or totally concealed beneath the earth and vegetation.

I tried to use torchlight and flashlight to illuminate the stone from different angles to show as much of the art as possible. These carvings were made as long ago as 3,300BC and maybe even earlier. In certain lighting conditions, this stone can appear quite flat and the carvings don't stand out. The best time to see it is coming up to midday, with the sun lighting it from the side. Otherwise, a long exposure photograph with a light source from the side, or above, helps to show up the markings very well.

Circles in stone at Dowth

Dowth kerbstone with circular carvings, illuminated from different angles to highlight the art.

This is a montage of four different images of a kerbstone at Dowth that has a number of circular features carved onto its surface.  I headed out with the camera tonight to try to get a photo of the triple conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter over Newgrange, but was disappointed when a bank of cloud rolled in before it got dark enough to get a nice shot. Not to waste the journey, I went from Newgrange to Dowth (my son Luke was with me for company) and we decided to try to light some of the kerbstones on the eastern side.

This stone is located two stones to the right of the famous kerbstone 51, the Stone of the Seven Suns. It is better exposed now than in any of my previous visits over the years. Some work has been done in recent time to clear away the grass around these kerbstones, which are fenced off to keep livestock away. Regrettably, whoever carried out the work also cut down a lone bush which had grown over kerbstone 51 a couple of years back.

To try to highlight the four circular features apparent on this stone, I tried to light it from different angles using a technique which I have been fond of for 16 years now which is familiar to photographers as "painting with light". What do these arcane circles represent? We could make many guesses. Given that Dowth's mythology as well as its design are likely connected to the study of eclipses, we could speculate that these are perhaps representative of full moons. Cosmic imagery is plentiful on the monuments of the Boyne Valley, where a community of farmers and astronomers built huge stone structures aligned on cosmic events over 5,000 years ago.

Triple conjunction of Moon, Venus and Jupiter over
Newgrange, pictured in 2012.

While we did not see the triple conjunction in all its glory, we did get a glimpse at the three planets hanging in the evening sky over Newgrange just before the cloud obscured them, and wondered what our ancient ancestors would have made of such a sight all those millennia ago.

Fittingly, as Dowth's Irish name, Dubhadh, means "darkness", it became pretty much completely overcast as we photographed its stones . . .

Knowth kerbstone 83 - natural and man-made holes

This is kerbstone 83 at Knowth – or, if you prefer Martin Brennan's numbering system (which I don't), kerbstone NW9. Professor George Eogan, who excavated Knowth, refers to the style of art on this stone as the "lavish style". He does not offer any further insights into what the carvings might mean. Who can blame him? Brennan suggests the mixture of natural holes and cupmarks "seem to provide a starry background" to lunar imagery. This is indeed a peculiar stone. It's got a series of natural holes and linear markings (maybe a geologist can tell us what they might be called) and engravings that are mostly crescents, with some concentric circles centred around what might be a natural solution hole. There's also a spiral and a wavy line. A very long linear marking across the middle of the stone appears to connect a series of crescents on the far left with a "wavy line" as Brennan calls it, on the right. Curiously, a series of five natural holes (at least they look natural and not man-made) between the spiral and the wavy line appear to be enclosed within a cartouche. One wonders why. The stone is unique in having such a conglomeration of natural features and man-made designs.

Kerbstone 67 at Newgrange

This is kerbstone number 67 at Newgrange. It is one of only three highly-decorated stones - there are 99 kerbs in total. This is in stark contrast to Knowth, where there are many very ornately decorated slabs in a kerb of 127 stones. Most of the kerbs at Newgrange are composed of a stone called greywacke (also called green grit) and were sourced, according to archaeologists and geologists, at Clogherhead on the Co. Louth coast, some 20km journey by river and sea.

PS: The triple spiral partly visible on the very bottom right of the stone is a copyright watermark added to the image by me!

Heaven's mirror - as above, so below at Knowth

The interpretation of megalithic art is a highly subjective area. I have a tendency to go along with some, but not all, of Martin Brennan's interpretations, and am particularly impressed with his interpretation of what he calls the Calendar Stone. This does not mean I am an absolute convert to the notion that all of the Neolithic symbolism carved on stones in the Boyne Valley is cosmic or astronomical in nature. I like to observe and to admire the art, and in some cases to interpret it in the context of astronomy. But what works for the interpretation of one stone does not necessarily transfer to other stones. There's so much art - particularly at Knowth, where one is constantly impressed by the sheer amount of petroglyphs that one wonders how many different people were responsible, and over what span of time. I've been going there for years, and I still stand in awe at this massive megalithic art gallery, grafted carefully and lovingly all those millennia ago.

The above kerbstone is kerb number 86 (according to Professor George Eogan's numbering convention, which we'll use for convenience). It is located on the western side of the kerb, a short distance north of the dramatic and cryptic entrance to the western passage.

So what do I see?

Do I see the C? The opposed Cs, as George called them?

Well, kind of. But I don't think like an archaeologist. So I dislike the simplicity and arbitrary nature of labels like "opposed Cs". I don't think the people who carved them thought of it that way at all.

So what do I see? Do I see what I want to see? Perhaps.

As an astronomer, I might see crescents; crescent moons. And I believe the moon is everywhere in megalithic art. But no, in this stone I see more than that. Here follows my (very subjective) interpretation - and remember that the tour guides at Newgrange tell you that you can all have your own theory, and that everyone's theory is as valid as anyone else's. So here is my just-as-equal-as-yours theory about kerbstone 86 at Knowth:

I might see the arc of heaven. I might see the Milky Way, in all its glory, stretched in a spectacular arch across the ceiling of night, in the beautiful ancient Boyne Valley under the darkest of skies, unpolluted by the choking fumes of modern industry and transport, and unhindered by the artificial light with which we so alienate ourselves from the cosmos today. And I might see this milky road of the stars, this bright way of the heavens, reflected on earth by the Boyne river, which loops magnificently around the great monuments of Brú na Bóinne. Did the ancients think this way? Did they think cosmically? Did the monuments somehow proclaim their tiny place of presence and permanence in a vast cosmos?

In olden times, the Irish for the Milky Way was Bealach/Bóthar na Bó Finne - the Way/Road of the White Cow. The Boyne river is from Bóinn - Bó Finne - the river of the White Cow. The names of the river on earth and the 'river' in the sky had a similar derivation.

Do these carvings on kerbstone 86 at Knowth represent the idea of Heaven's Mirror - As Above, So Below? Is the sky reflected on the ground? Is the line in the middle representative of the demarcation, the liminal boundary between heaven and earth? All of the symbols are enclosed in a sort-of great cartouche, perhaps an indication of the cosmos as an entity with limits - something that ends where the stars are fixed, where the souls go after we gently place their remains in the stone chambers, perhaps?

Or is this stone's symbolism representative of opposed worlds (or even mingling worlds) rather than opposed Cs? The sídhe (mounds) were considered access points through which the Tuatha Dé Danann could pass between worlds - between this world and the otherworld:

And as to Angus Og, son of the Dagda, sometimes he would come from Brugh na Boinn and let himself be seen upon the earth,

Underworld, overworld. This world, the otherworld. Earth, heaven. Ground, sky. Conscious realm, subconscious realm. Reality, fantasy. Fact, theory. Objective, subjective. Tourist, tour guide. Tomb, womb. Decoration, language.

Say what you C. You are unlikely to be proven wrong. But have a go at interpreting it. Because if you don't, someone else will. Someone else will C what you don't C ...