The Attentive Traveler – Ireland Adventure 2024 – Knowth – Boyne Valley

This site is an impressive necropolis, with one grand hill-topping mound surrounded by several smaller satellite tombs. 

The central mound is 220 feet wide, 40 feet high, and covers 1.5 acres.

We saw plenty of mysteriously carved curbstones and new-feeling grassy mounds that you can look down on from atop the grand tomb.

Knowth’s big tomb has two passages:  one entering from the east, and one from the west. 

Like Newgrange, it’s likely aligned so the rising and setting sun shone down the passageways to light the two interior chambers, but these are aligned to the equinox rather than the solstice. 

Neither passage is open to the public, but we visited  room carved into the mound by archaeologists, where a cutaway lets you see the layers of dirt and rock used to build the mound. 

We also got a glimpse down one of the passages.

The Knowth site thrived from 3000 to 2000 BC.  The central tomb dates from about 2000 BC. 

It was likely used for burial rituals and sun-tracking ceremonies to please the gods and ensure the regular progression of seasons for crops. 

The site then evolved into the domain of fairies and myths for the next 2,000 years and became an Iron Age fortress in the early centuries after Christ. 

Around AD 1000, it was an all-Ireland political center, and later, a Norman fortress was built atop the mound. 

Now, 4000 years after prehistoric people built these strange tombs, one can stand atop the hill at Knowth, look out over the surrounding countryside, and contemplate the passage of time.

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