Knowth Kerbstone K24

Kerbstone K24 is one of the 127 kerbstones numbered in Professor George Eogan's record of the Knowth monument. It is located on the south-eastern side of the great passage tomb mound.

The Megalithic Art of the Passage Tombs at Knowth, Co. Meath

Description of Kerbstone 24

At the top of the main face there are three sets of three boxed Us, opening against the (damaged) top edge of the stone. These and some small circles are more finely picked than most of the carvings on this stone and may belong to another (possibly earlier) phase.

To the right is an anti-clockwise spiral of three-and-a-half turns, with a single circle to the right, and there are three smaller circles parallel with the right edge of the stone. A row of six deeply picked oval motifs are arranged across the stone, the four on the right being gapped. Two further small circles, one of which is gapped, occur to the lower-left. All these are picked with a fine to medium-point, and some of the pickmarks are elongated.

Excavations at Knowth Volume 7: The Megalithic Art of the Passage Tombs at Knowth, Co. Meath

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Knowth Stone Age passage tomb

Kerbstone K24 is one of the stones encircling the Great Mound at Knowth, recorded in the numbered kerb sequence from K1 to K127. The central cairn is accompanied by eighteen satellite mounds. Knowth holds roughly a quarter of all recorded megalithic art in western Europe, with two major passages and decades of scientific excavation behind the story told today.

Knowth was raised more than five thousand years ago in the Neolithic period, around 3200 BC, when established farming communities were shaping the Boyne Valley. Together with Newgrange and Dowth, it forms the heart of the Brú na Bóinne World Heritage landscape.

Originally 127 kerbstones encircled the monument; three are now missing. Most of the survivors bear panels of curvilinear and circular ornament. Some compositions suggest careful observation of lunar rhythms, a theme that runs through much of the art at Knowth.

Medieval texts and local folklore associate Knowth with the royal cemetery of the Boyne and with ancestral powers of the land. The concentration of labour required to build Brú na Bóinne implies strong leadership and shared belief among Neolithic communities.