Muiredach, abbot of Monasterboice, 890-923 AD.; his life and surroundings . ult of the sky and the world beyond it ; or,perhaps, the ceaseless succession of days and years, the march of time,that leads on rapidly and inevitably to death and to judgment. It must be noticed, however, that though certain signs of the zodiac areeasily recognisable—as Leo, Taurus, Aries, and Gemini in [9], Capricornus(?),Sagittarius, and Aquarius (.) in [10], Cancer (.^) in the much defaced panel[11], yet these are not in their proper order, and they are interspersedwith figures—such as the rider at the end of [10]
Muiredach, abbot of Monasterboice, 890-923 AD.; his life and surroundings . ult of the sky and the world beyond it ; or,perhaps, the ceaseless succession of days and years, the march of time,that leads on rapidly and inevitably to death and to judgment. It must be noticed, however, that though certain signs of the zodiac areeasily recognisable—as Leo, Taurus, Aries, and Gemini in [9], Capricornus(?),Sagittarius, and Aquarius (.) in [10], Cancer (.^) in the much defaced panel[11], yet these are not in their proper order, and they are interspersedwith figures—such as the rider at the end of [10] —which are not zodiacalsigns. Neither is the procession of riders preceding a charioteer in [12].These have not yet been explained : an exactly similar procession This rider illustrates the attitude so common in Irish representations of horsemen, with the legstretched horizontally forward ; contrast the riders in [12]. MO N ASTER BO ICE 69 appears on the crosses at Clonmacnois and at Kells. There can beno doubt that the zodiac was in the mind of the artist, but he. \f3 ^^ Fig. 24.—The Zodiac. {From a dnniiiig by the Author.) treated the subject very freely, and mingled it with ideas which weare no longer able to reconstruct. / o MUIREDACH Next we come to the panels on the stem of the Cross. At the bottomof the first face are two animals (perhaps lions) playing or fighting withone another [13] ; above which are four panels, each enclosed in a ropeborder, which we may take in order, beginning with the lowermost. The first [17] is a double panel, containing two scenes. At the left-hand side are Adam and Eve, standing under the forbidden tree, whichis heavily laden with fruit. Round the tree is coiled the serpent,whispering into the ear of Eve, who is handing the apple to her husband.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidmuiredachabb, bookyear1914
