Weekend in Dublin: National Museum

The National Museum

After some initial difficulty, Kayla and I were able to find the National Museum of Archaeology.  We had been there once before on one of our field trips, but we only had about twenty minutes to wander.  Seeing this museum is actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to go back to Dublin.

The museum is pretty great.  It's not on the scale of say the Field Museum, but it has a lot packed into it and it was free.  I am proud to say that Kayla and I saw the entirety of the museum.  Although, to be honest, there were a few things that I didn't look at.

Statue at Ritual Artificial Pond

The museum has a really cool exhibit called Kingship & Sacrifice.  It was very interesting and held a lot of cool objects.  However, besides the objects there were also bog bodies on display.  These are the remains of people found in bogs who appear to have been elites who were ritually sacrificed.  I did look at one body and decided I did not really want to see the rest.  The one I looked at was more skeletal than the others and after reading the descriptions of what was done to some of these men, I knew I did not want to see their remains.

Other than that, I think I saw every exhibit in the museum.  When we went to the National Museum before our professor, John, told us that we were not allowed to take photos but that maybe we could sneak some.  So when Kayla and I went to check a few of our things we began to give them our cameras, but then the attendants told us that we were allowed to take photos (as long as we didn't use flash).  I think we were both really excited about this.

Tara Brooch

I think some of the coolest objects were in the room known as the Treasury.  Most of these were forms of metalwork, but there was still great variety.  My favorite object in the museum was in this room: the Tara Brooch.  The Tara Brooch was made during Early Medieval Ireland and is an example of Insular Art with incredible detail.

Neolithic Fish Traps

Late Bronze Age Gorget

However, there were many amazing things to see in the museum.  There were a lot of prehistoric items and Kayla and I had fun identifying the items that we learned about in our classes.

Mummy with an Encaustic Portrait

Me and a Replica of a Viking Ship

There were also a few exhibits tucked away into little corners like the museum's Ancient Egypt collection.  Although a few of these seemed a bit out of place as most of the items were of Irish origin or were significant to Ireland (such as a replica of a Scandinavian Viking ship).

To finish up this post here a few more photos of items I couldn't resist sharing.

The Shrine of Saint Brigid's (Important Irish Saint) Shoe

A Sheela Na Gig (Female Exhibitionist Figure Thought to Ward off Evil)