The East Chamber of Knowth

Entrance to Knowth East. It was found during excavations that the first few meters of the passage had been destroyed by Iron age ditch digging. The entrance is sealed off by a slab of concrete, and you now enter the mound by crossing a metal bridge and through a door on the left. The engraved Entrance stone has a vertical groove, slimiar to the Newgrange Entrance stone. Egg shaped 'exotic' stones, chunks of quartz and a circular 'setting' can be seen in the foreground.

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Knowth East

The cruciform east chamber at Knowth is the largest in Ireland, with its capstone placed some 7 m above the floor, crowning a complex corbelled ceiling. From the entrance kerbstone to the inner endstone, the monument measures 40 meters, the longest megalithic passage in Europe. The orthostats are decorated with a range of angular and curve-linear motifs (some of which are shown at the bottom of this page).

The passage leads into a massive chamber. There is no access for the public - the last few meters involves crawling through a narrow gap where the orthostats have leaned in. Fixing this would have involved dismanteling the corbelling, which was thought not to be a good idea. The chamber measures about 8 meters across from north to south, and is even more massive than Newgrange. Large stone slabs, which are rudimentary basins are found in the left and rear recesses.

The corbelled roof of Knowth East. This is the largest chamber and highest capstone found in Ireland. The capstone is more than 7 meters above the floor.

The Dagda's cauldron

A large stone basin is located in the right hand recess before a beautifuly decorated stone. The basin (below) is crafted from a huge lump of sandstone and measures 1.2 m in diameter. One of the first things to note about this massive and wonderful rock is that it was placed here before the chamber was built - it is much too large to have been brought in later.

It is shaped like a cauldron - an important motif in Irish mythology. The best known cauldron belonged to the Dagda, a chieftan of the Tuatha De Dannan who lived in nearby Newgrange. His cauldron was one of the four chief treasures that the De Dannans brought to Ireland with them, the others being the Stone of Destiny at Tara, the Sword of Light and Spear of Lugh. The cauldron was a vessel of plenty - no one ever left it hungry, and it never ran out. It also had the power to regenerate life: dead bodies could be placed into the cauldron and drawn out alive and whole again. This symbolism gives us some insight into Neolithic religeous beliefs, as archaeologists believe the basins were used to contain cremated ashes. It is highly probable that these chambers were viewed as wombs, and that rebirth and reincarnation beliefs were a fundamental part of the rituals that went on here.

The centre is dished and engraved with a rayed solar design - a central circle opens into 12 radials ranged six on either side of a central axis. At the top, another circle becomes a nest of arcs. The image above is taken from Brennan's book, and I have added the circle in the centre which he missed.

Perhaps it represents the meeting of the sun and moon at Knowth, when once or twice in each cycle, both passages were probably illuminated at the same time on specific dates. The sides are decorated with a series of seven grooves which run around the basin which give way to a solar/lunar emblem at the front. The back stone of this recess also has some interesting engravings (below).

'The Dagda's Cauldron', the Great Basin of Knowth, right recess, East Chamber.

A fine artifact was discovered in the entrance to the northern recess, close to the basin. It is a decorated mace head, carved from an incredibly hard piece of flint, and probably ceremonial.The flint is thought to originate from the Orkney Islands. It is engraved with whorls and spirals in a similar fashion to the Entrance Stone at Newgrange, and is a definitely precurser to Celtic Art. The three artifacts found here, the flint basin and long grooved object are the works of master craftsmen. The mace head is now on display in the National Museum in Dublin.

A Canadian scientist, Phillip Stookie, has postulated that the engraved slab at the rear of the east chamber (OR 47 in the diagram below) bears an engraving which may be the earliest map of the surface of the moon. This idea supports the work of several researchers who believe that illumination of chambers by the moon was of as much importance as the sun, and that certain full moons near the equinoxes could possibly have shone on this engraved stone.

A plan of the east passage and chamber showing the location of engravings, from Knowth the book of the excavation by George Eogan.

However, due to the damage to the entrance, it's being covered with a concrete slab, and the fact that Knowth House was built directly in line with the entrance, we can only speculate or simulate with a computer.

The east passage, the longest neolithic passage in western Europe. The outer portion of the passage was damaged in the Iron age and the inner portion near the chamber has sagged badly.