It is not what it first appears: scholars interpret the symbol as a Christian cross, a sun symbol, or a representation of the Resurrection, a reminder that the swastika's associations shifted dramatically across the twentieth century and that its earlier meanings were widespread and various. The panel is part of a remarkable late-medieval tomb complex, the Royal or McMahon tomb, now reassembled against a purpose-built wall inside the friary's newly roofed nave. The canopy itself is tripartite, meaning it consists of three arched bays supported on four pillars, with crocketed and pinnacled pointed arches in the Gothic manner. Above the central arch, a carved head of St John sits in a dish, a scene from the story of Herod's feast that appears with some regularity in late-medieval funerary carving. Two floriated roof bosses, decorative carved keystones where vault ribs intersect, survive from the groined vault, though most of the ribs themselves are gone.

The tomb was erected around 1470 by More ní Bhriain, daughter of one of the kings of Thomond and wife of Terence MacMahon of Corcavaskin. It would originally have stood in the chancel, close to the high altar, the prestige position for a monument of this rank. By the mid-nineteenth century the structure had completely disintegrated, and the principal carvings were incorporated into another monument nearby, the Creagh tomb, which occupied the original Royal tomb site. In 1952 the Office of Public Works reconstructed the canopy, placing it just west of the Creagh tomb. The carved slabs, which draw on the English medieval alabaster tradition in their style and iconography, some depicting scenes from Christ's Passion, others showing Christ alongside the Apostles, were eventually separated from the Creagh tomb and are now displayed on the reverse of the new wall in the nave, with replicas put in their place in the chancel. A conservation programme completed in 2011 brought the tomb to its current location, offering the structure a degree of protection it had not reliably enjoyed since the sixteenth century.