Knowth looks like something from the Lord of the Rings from the outside.Inside its a neolithic passage tomb older and more technologically advanced than the pyramids at giza.
Knowth is aligned to the equinoxes something that would have taken an unusually advanced knowlege of astronomy and on a few days each year light used to travel up a narrow passage into the mound to illuminate a central chamber with big ‘basin stones’ shaped like cauldrons or alters. Today there is a large supporting wall put in to keep the structure intact so it doesnt happen.
Another unusually high tech feature is the corbelled roof, its is almost a perfect arch showing the builders were aware of the stresses and strains the roof would face and they built it so well using only stone materials and stone tools, without even using mortar that its lasted more than 5000 years and is still water tight. Despite the site being altered during various phases of occupation.
Knowth features in mythology as Cnogba, its linked with deities like Lugh, Aengus, the Dagda, Bui/The Cailleach and name might be related to the death of a goddess there or interestingly to the name for Hazel nuts (Cno) famously eaten there. Its interesting because it relates to the story of the near by river boyne.
The river came into the world from a well in the otherworld over hung by hazel trees. A salmon lived there and it got divine knowlege by eating the nuts that fell into the well. When the river entered our world the salmon swam down in to it and lived by the passage tombs until it was caught by Fionn who got divine inspiration from eating it.
The hazel nut had that role even outside myth, poets in medieval ireland called the struggle for inspiration ‘cracking the caill crimmon’ or cracking the hazel nuts. While we cant know what meaning the builders of knowth gave it. The story of the river and the hazel nuts might mean Cnogba was atleast a place associated with divine inspiration.
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