That quiet asymmetry is what makes this piece worth pausing over. Found at Cill Éinne on Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands, the slab measures 0.7 metres tall, 0.25 metres wide, and 0.2 metres thick, modest dimensions for an object that turns out to have two distinct things to say.

The slab came to light near the south-east corner of Teaghlach Éinne, the early monastic enclosure associated with St Enda, whose foundation on Inis Mór was among the most significant of the early Irish church. When it was found, part of the slab lay underneath a modern concrete grave surround, which gives some sense of how easily early medieval stonework can end up obscured beneath later layers of a still-functioning burial ground. Cross-slabs are a common form of early Christian monument in Ireland, typically upright stones incised with a cross rather than carved in full relief, and this one carries a ringed Latin cross on each face. A ringed cross is simply a cross whose arms are enclosed within a circle, a form that appears throughout early medieval insular carving. On the first face, the ring is intersected by a Latin cross whose arms extend slightly beyond it, with a circular hollow cut at the top and a T-shaped terminal at the base. The second face is similar but subtly different: the T-shaped terminals appear at both top and base, yet here the arms of the cross stop at the ring rather than breaking through it. The difference is small but deliberate, and it suggests the carver was working with intention on both surfaces rather than simply repeating a template.