Mound of the Hostages: Tara's Forgotten Tomb

The Hill of Tara in Meath is famous as the seat of the High Kings, but its oldest monument is far older than any king: the Mound of the Hostages, Dumha na nGiall, a Neolithic passage tomb built between 3350 and 2800 BC in the same style as Newgrange — about 15 metres across and three high, with a passage four metres long. It is lined up so that the rising sun lights the chamber on the mornings of Samhain and Imbolc, at the beginning of November and of February. The dead were mostly cremated and their ashes spread on the floor with pottery, beads and pins, then covered with stone slabs, layer on layer; burials went on into the Bronze Age, to about 1600–1700 BC, and an estimated 250 to 500 people lie in it. A few steps away, on the mound called An Forradh, the Royal Seat, stands the Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny, on which, the legend says, the kings of Ireland were crowned up to Muirchertach mac Ercae around AD 500.