Knowth and the passage-tombs of Ireland by George Eogan. Purchase Book at Amazon.com Hardback Edition Paperback Edition Purchase Book at Amazon.co.uk Hardback Edition Paperback Edition

Editor's foreword by Colin Renfrew to Knowth and the passage-tombs of Ireland.

It is rarely given to any man to enter, for the first time in centuries or millennia, a well-preserved structure from the prehistoric period that is actually older than the Pyramids of Egypt by several hundred years. This is precisely what George Eogan did, he located the stone-build passageway which led a distance of 34 m into the western side of the great earth mound at Knowth, and discovered the megalithic tomb at its centre, hitherto unknown to science.
An even more striking discovery was to come. For on 30 July of the following year, another long passage was discovered on the eastern side of the mound. And,, on 1 August, Professor Eogan had the remarkable experience of entering, for the first time, the great corbelled eastern chamber at Knowth, and of discovering the carved stone basin which still lay within it.

Knowth is one of the three great mounds in the prehistoric cemetery at the Bend of the River Boyne. Newgrange has been justly famous since the discovery in AD 1699 of the chamber tomb within it, and it was systematically investigated in recent years by the late Professor M. J. O'Kelly, whose full account, Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend, was published in 1982 in the present 'New Aspects of Antiquity' series. The third mound, Dowth, was partially investigated in the last century. In view of the chamber tombs within the tow other mounds, it was no surprise that Knowth too should contain a burial chamber. But the discovery of two chambers, situated back-to-back, as it were, as well as their scale, and above all the richness of the decorative art on the stones, was something which could not have been anticipated.

As Professor Eogan describes, these were no chance discoveries. He began work at Knowth in 1962, devoting his attention first to the interesting series of smaller megalithic tombs which surrounded the great mound. Although none of these stands complete, in the way the two burial chambers in the main mound do, they are of considerable interest for the light which they shed on how the site was used and developed,  and indeed for our understanding of the use of the whole remarkable cemetery of the Bend of the Boyne. No fewer than twenty-four seasons' work have gone into the very comprehensive project at Knowth, and as the photographs clearly show, the mound itself and the area surrounding it was very thoroughly investigated. The full and details account by Professor Eogan of the excavation is to be published by the Royal Irish Academy in a number of monographs, of which the first recently appeared.

The art of the Boyne cemetery is one of its chief glories, and indeed represents one of the most remarkable artistic achievements of prehistoric Europe. The decorated stones at Newgrange have long been known and admired, and it came as no surprise that further examples should emerge when Knowth was systemically studied. No-one could have predicted, however, that the site would yield so many sculptured stones, and in such variety, a corpus of art works actually far larger than that at Newgrange. In this book many of them are published for the first time, with a discussion of the art of the Boyne as a whole, and of its origins and chronology.

The important new discoveries at Knowth have made necessary a re-evaluation of the Irish passage-tombs as a whole, and that is what Professor Eogan here undertakes, with a thorough consideration of their construction, their chronology, of the finds made within them, and of their use.
For many readers, however, as for myself, one of the great pleasures of this book will be the way it allows one to relive the moments of the great discoveries, and to visualize very clearly the nature of this splendid monument, its construction and its art. Bar in the summer of 1982 I had the privilege of accompanying Professor Eogan down the long entrance passage into the great eastern chamber at Knowth, and it is an experience which I shall never forget. It is a pleasure to see this remarkable discovery so clearly described here, and so effectively set within its wider context in Irish and indeed in European prehistory.

Colin Renfrew - Disney Professor of Archaeology, University of Cambridge.

Ceremonial carved flint macehead found in the right-hand recess of the eastern tomb chamber. It would originally have been mounted on a wooden handle through the large hole. This is undoubtedly one of the finest works of art created by the passage tomb builders of western Europe. This image is about the size of the actual macehead which is only 80mm long.