Several views of the Seven Suns stone at Dowth

Several views of the Seven Suns stone at Dowth

Four views of the Seven Suns stone painted with torchlight.

(This blog post was first published on Mythical Ireland on 25th June 2015).

On Saturday last, the eve of Summer Solstice, my son Luke and I headed out into the Boyne Valley in the hope of getting a photo of the triple conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the Moon at Newgrange. Unfortunately after the sun set a bank of cloud rolled in, obscuring the triplet before we could get any decent photos. Not to waste an opportunity for a photograph (I rarely do!), we headed to nearby Dowth, where I decided to play around with torches and flashes using my favourite stone-lighting technique – painting with light. 

Stone of the Seven Suns (K51) at Dowth

Stone of the Seven Suns (K51) at Dowth

Stone of the Seven Suns (K51) at Dowth

Stone of the Seven Suns (K51) at Dowth

The stone above is famously known as the Stone of the Seven Suns. It was so named by Martin Brennan, an artist and writer who made several significant discoveries about ancient astronomical alignments in Ireland. There are several theories as to what this stone might mean. It is one of just a few stones that are completely exposed. Many of Dowth's 115 kerb stones still lie either partly or totally concealed beneath the earth and vegetation.

I tried to use torchlight and flashlight to illuminate the stone from different angles to show as much of the art as possible. These carvings were made as long ago as 3,300BC and maybe even earlier. In certain lighting conditions, this stone can appear quite flat and the carvings don't stand out. The best time to see it is coming up to midday, with the sun lighting it from the side. Otherwise, a long exposure photograph with a light source from the side, or above, helps to show up the markings very well.

Although nobody can know with certainty what the symbols of Irish megalithic art mean, there is an interesting correlation between these 'sun' symbols and the mythology of Dowth. The myth appears to describe a total solar eclipse and the coming of a sudden darkness during the building of the monument. My chapter about Dowth in Island of the Setting Sun: In Search of Ireland's Ancient Astronomers (2006), theorised that the myth correlated closely with the total number of kerb stones at Dowth, and that this was tied to the rotation of the lunar nodes, which in turn is one observable facet of the pattern or sequence of eclipses.
The two passages at Dowth appear to point to the place where the moon would set at both the minor lunar standstill south setting (for the northern chamber) and the major lunar standstill south setting (for the southern chamber). This COULD be evidence that the builders of Dowth were interested in the rotation of the lunar nodes, and the consequent effect on the extreme declinations of the moon, and of course the link to eclipses.
This series of photographs depicts Kerb 51 (Stone of the Seven Suns) in different lighting, accentuating the various picked motifs. There are seven 'suns' - five of these have a circle around them; two to not. There is also a series of linear markings on the upper left edge of the stone, which Brennan postulated might have been a measurement device (a bit like a ruler), and beside that there is a series of markings that look similar to the 'fern leaf' carving in the chamber of Newgrange.

If you like any of these images, you can purchase your own print or mounted print. Send me an email via the contact page or visit the shop.

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Anthony Murphy is the author of ten books, including works of non-fiction and fiction. As of 2024, all of these books are in print or available for digital download.