Cross-inscribed stone, Knappaghmanagh, Co. Mayo

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-inscribed stone, Knappaghmanagh, Co. Mayo

A roughly triangular stone slab from County Mayo presents a puzzle that has quietly absorbed anyone who has looked closely at it.

On one face, a Latin cross sits enclosed within a double-grooved circle, which is ordinary enough for early Christian stonework in Ireland. What is less ordinary is that this cross-in-circle has been given a body: a human head tops the circle at a slight angle, two arms bend upward at the elbows, and three vertical lines descend from the base of the circle toward the bottom edge of the slab as though representing legs. The cross, in other words, has been absorbed into the figure of a man, or a man has been constructed around the cross, and the two readings remain equally plausible.

The carving repays close attention. The face is clearly worked, with circular eyes set on either side of an elongated triangular nose, and two horizontal incised lines above the eyes suggesting a heavy brow. The chin comes to a point, or perhaps terminates in a beard, where it meets the enclosing circle. Above the head sits a conical or domed feature filled with five parallel horizontal lines bisected by a vertical one, interpreted as hair or a head-dress. Small cupmarks, that is, deliberate circular depressions punched into the stone surface, appear in each quadrant of the circle around the cross, and two larger ones flank the head at the level where it meets the circle. The arms and possibly the head-dress appear to have been added at a later stage, incised more lightly than the rest of the composition, which suggests the image was altered or elaborated over time rather than conceived all at once. In the lower corners of the slab, two additional motifs appear independently: a cross in saltire form, its arms set diagonally like an X, and a cross of four intersecting diagonal lines enclosed within a roughly incised diamond shape. The slab measures 0.86 metres in length and 0.6 metres in height, modest dimensions for something carrying this much visual complexity.

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