Captivating history
Dublin has a fine collection of museums. To satiate my interest in Irish pre-history, I strolled across some of the city’s cobblestoned streets, to the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology.
There are over two million archaeological artifacts and several captivating exhibitions, but if you’re on limited time, just seeing the intriguing “Kingship and Sacrifice” exhibition would suffice, in particular, the bodies that were discovered in Irish peat bog or marshland. Archaeologists have discovered a significant number of human remains that date to the Iron Age, enough to justify a Bog Bodies Research Project run by a team of Irish and international specialists.
Oldcroghan Man was uncovered in 2003, when contractors were digging a drain. His hands were well preserved – I could see the nails and skin were clearly intact, like he had just died yesterday. Thanks to the bog’s lack of oxygen and high acidity levels, Oldcroghan Man was unable to fully decompose, leaving clues for the team to decipher how he died. The team found signs of trauma and mutilation on many of the bog bodies, believing that they were probably murdered and disposed of in the bog as a form of sacrifice in kingship rituals. For Oldcroghan Man, he died at about 25 years old from a stab wound to the chest.
Having had my fill of the macabre, it was time to round up my day with a good book to read.
Of the medieval period, and internationally well-known with over half a million visitors each year, the Book Of Kells is the most elaborate manuscript of its kind to survive from the early Middle Ages. It is safely kept at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland’s oldest university, which was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I. Past alumni include literary greats like author Bram Stoker (of Dracula fame), poet Oscar Wilde, and Jonathan Swift who penned Gulliver’s Travels.
On top of the admission fee to see the Book Of Kells, it was worth it to add an additional euro to join a student-led tour of the historic university grounds, which was by far the cheapest tour in the city.