Searching for Jeremiah's Tomb!
And now, for something completely different.
In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, and since it’s the second year that St. Patrick’s Day parades are cancelled, I just had to bring you something from Ireland – a place my wife and I visited in 2011.
The Boyne River Valley – County Meath, Ireland
One of the most interesting "locations" in setting the action for my book, The Brotherhood Conspiracy - the second book of the Jerusalem Prophecies series - was in the Irish countryside. And it is here, legends claim, that the Jewish prophet, Jeremiah, was laid to rest.
Hard to believe? Well, let’s take a look.
In the Irish county of Meath, outside the small town of Loughcrew, are a pair of hill tops overlooking the Boyne River Valley on which are erected the largest complex of passage tombs in Ireland.
These hilltops contain sixteen “passage tombs” that are between five and six thousand years old, older than the Egyptian pyramids. The largest of these passage tombs is Cairn T and within its rounded burial chambers are a series of stones with megalithic decorations. Cairn T is also locally called the tomb of the Ollamh Foldah . . . the Old Prophet. There are some who claim the stone carvings in Cairn T depict the flight of the prophet Jeremiah and his scribe, Baruch, from Egypt to Gibraltar to Ireland and locate the burial place of Jeremiah within the tomb.
Not uncommon in Ireland, passage tombs are large mounds of stone and earth, typically erected on the highest hill in a region and raised above the landscape, containing a long central passage that opens into a cross-shaped burial chamber, off of which are three smaller chambers. The most famous of the ancient Irish passage tombs is Newgrange, a massive, megalithic mound about fifteen kilometers to the east of Loughcrew, a place of legend and fancy.
Newgrange – a massive passage tomb east of Loughcrew.
Compared to Newgrange, Cairn T – five hundred years older than the pyramids of Egypt, one thousand years older than Stonehenge – is a historical backwater. Where Newgrange has a visitor’s center, guided tours, and strict rules and supervision – and guards – the Cairns at Loughcrew are generally ignored and abandoned by both tourists and locals, and they are treated that way.
To gain access to Cairn T, all that is needed is to arrive at the rustic coffee shop of the nineteenth-century Loughcrew Gardens just west of the Cairns, surrender your driver’s license as security for the key to the tombs, and let yourself in. No guards, no admission fee, nothing.
Older than the Pyramids, this is Cairn T, the megalithic passage tomb in Meath.
There are websites claiming that Cairn T is the final resting place of the prophet Jeremiah. The cairn is also referred to in Irish history as the tomb of the Ollamh Foldah, a title that in both Hebrew and Irish means “possessor or revealer of hidden knowledge.” One website’s author claims the Neolithic carvings on several stones inside the cairn—particularly those he identified as the “journey stone” and the tablet-shaped “end stone,” which catch the first rays of the sun on the solstice—reveal the tale of Jeremiah’s journey from Egypt to Gibraltar and on to Ireland.
The “Journey Stone” inside Cairn T. The carved designs are dated prior to the Pyramids.
Come back on Friday, March 19th, to read the rest of the story!
