Indiana Jones and the Bog Bodies

    

       No, you did not miss the box office release of this thriller. I went to the National Museum of Archaeology today, and it was grand. It is on Kildare Street and one of Ireland's four national museums. It was officially opened in 1890 and the interior was richly decorated with motifs reminiscent of ancient Greece and Rome; so it was really stunning inside. The Museum has two floors with various exhibits: Prehistoric Ireland, Ireland's Gold, The Treasury, Kingship & Sacrifice, Viking Ireland, Medieval Ireland, Ancient Egypt, and Clontarf 1014. It is hard to describe every exhibit, but I will talk a bit about them as I show you some pictures of what I saw. The museum is not huge, so I went around the various area more than once, so I apologize if I hop around the exhibits too much.

Though I know it is a bit blurry and hard to see, this is a picture of a 4,500 year old longboat that they pulled out of a bog. Bogs are basically pits of decomposing plant matter and are amazing at preserving things in. Before the introduction of refrigerators the ancient Irish used to bury food and other things in bogs since they are so cold; to this day things are still being found. An ancient manuscript was found in the 1950s and is housed in the museum that they pulled out of a bog.

Extraordinarily well preserved bodies have also been  found, with their hair and clothing still intact despite being thousands of years old.

The Bronze Age (roughly 2400-500 BC) was a time of great change in Ireland due to the introduction of metalworking. They created fabulous weapons and other objects from mixing metals.

During this time, passage tombs were used to bury important dead.

The building of passage tombs was normally carried out with megaliths and smaller stones; they usually date from the Neolithic Age. Megalithic art has been identified carved into the stones at some sites. The passage itself, in a number of notable instances, is aligned in such a way that the sun shines into the passage at a significant point in the year, for example at sunrise on the winter solstice or at sunset on the equinox.

This is from the Battle of Clontarf exhibit about Brian Boru and the Battle for Dubln. The Battle of Clontarf was fought a thousand years ago in 1014 and is when the Christian king of Ireland, Brian Boru, defeated the pagan Vikings and attempted to drive them out of Ireland.

As I have spoken of before, Dublin and much of Ireland was settled by the Vikings who were there from around 800 to 1200AD. The exhibit had lots of artifacts from excavations around Dublin, which was really awesome. There were viking weapons and things used in their day to day activities.

A 19th century replica of the 12th century St Manchan's Shrine. The original shrine was made to house the bones of St Manchan was probably made by the same individual who made the Cross of Cong. Its ornament is known as the Hiberno-Urnes style - a blending of a late Viking art style with native Celtic Irish art. (No, I did not remember this off the top of my head, I took a picture of the plaque describing it).

As you can probably imagine the introduction of Christianity had a huge impact on the Irish people. The Medieval exhibit follows Irish life from the Anglo Norman invasion in the 12th century to the Reformation in the 16th century.

Egypt might seem about as far away as Ireland as one can get, but the museum has a small exhibition on Ancient Egypt. There are four mummies which are elaborately painted in mummy cases and other artefacts. 

I do not know about you, but when I think about the Ancient Celts I do not tend to imagine them decked out in gold, but apparently they were as there is a whole section on Ireland's gold. Many of the objects on display were found in hoards and were discovered by farmers or in turf cutting (bog cutting).