Cross-slab, Coumduff, Co. Kerry

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Coumduff, Co. Kerry

In the village of Knockane, on a small area of open ground, sits a stone slab that carries one of the more quietly cryptic symbols of early Irish Christianity.

Measuring roughly 1.1 by 0.94 metres, the slab is inscribed on a single face with a cross of arcs, from whose lower arm a plain stem descends. What makes it particularly interesting is a loop carved at the right side of the upper arm, identified as a monogram form of the Chi-Rho symbol.

The Chi-Rho is one of the oldest Christian monograms, formed from the first two Greek letters of the word Christos, and its appearance on early Irish stonework places a monument like this within the broader tradition of early medieval Christian carving that spread across the island from roughly the fifth century onwards. The looped form here is a compressed, almost shorthand version of that symbol, folded into the geometry of the cross design rather than displayed separately. The slab sits about three-quarters of a mile south of Lough Anscaul, on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, a region that preserves an unusually dense concentration of early Christian and prehistoric monuments. The description of the stone was recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a detailed catalogue of the area's surviving field monuments.

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