Newgrange: Monument to Immortality

Many people who visit the ancient and magnificent Newgrange monument in the Boyne Valley are driven by some deep longing to connect with their most distant roots. The giant 5,000-year-old megalithic construction evokes awe and wonderment, and a keen sense of melancholy for the community of people who created and fashioned it from stone and earth in the remote past, a people now lost to time. For the past two centuries, archaeologists, antiquarians, writers and researchers have been probing Newgrange in the hope of revealing something about its purpose, and something about the mysterious people of the New Stone Age who created giant structures using primitive technology. What has become clear from these investigations is that Newgrange is a uniquely special place, and that its construction was carried out not by a grizzly mob of grunting barbarians, but rather by an advanced agrarian community who had developed keen skills in the sciences of astronomy, engineering and architecture. In "Newgrange: Monument to Immortality", writer and researcher Anthony Murphy goes deep into the mind and soul of his Neolithic ancestors to attempt to draw forth some answers to these questions. In a deeply moving, poetic and philosophical exploration, he looks beyond the archaeology and the astronomy to reveal a much more profound and sacred vision of the very spirit of the people who were driven to such marvellous and wondrous efforts.

Table of Contents

Preface vii
Acknowledgements x
1. Connections 1
2. Stone and Bone 19
3. Community Effort 39
4. Sun, Moon & Stars 57
5. Vallancey and the Armed King 81
6. The Test of Time 99
7. Tomb or Womb? 117
8. Towards the Light 133
9. Cave Myths 149
10. The Divine Child 167
11. Inside the Chamber of Light 185
12. What Came after Newgrange? 205
13. What Have We Lost? 223
14. How Can We Go Back? 239
Endnotes 257
Index