i)2 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



traces of ornamentation between B and C, is round from B to D, 

 swelling to C and then contracting to D, where it begins to change into 

 a four flat-sided point, thick below D, and tapering down to E. 

 Although this pin must be classed with objects of ancient Irish art, it 

 is not probable, from its being picked up among the loose stones, where 

 it may have found its way by accident, that it can lay claim to any- 

 thing like the antiquity of the tomb itself. It is here given simply as 

 having been found in this ancient earn, without suggesting any period 

 as to its own age. 



The central chamber was floored or closely covered by five thin 

 flags, underneath which, on being raised, were found fragments of 

 charred bones, and small splintered stones, mixed with pieces of 

 charcoal. 



The interior of this earn had been so well plundered at some 

 former period that no remains of the actual mode of sepulture were 

 found in it ; but, judging from the quantities of charred human bones, 

 broken nrns, inscribed bone flakes, polished stone balls, articles of 

 bronze and iron, bone, glass and amber beads, &c.,* collected from 

 the other earns during our examination of them in September, 1865, 

 two important facts would appear to be clearly established therefrom, 

 viz., that cremation of the dead was practised on Sliabh-na-Caillighe 

 up to the Christian era, at the commencement of which, as pre- 

 viously shown, the use of this cemetery was given up ; and that, 

 during the period the cemetery was in actual use, the people must 

 have been acquainted with the use of articles made not only of stone 

 and of bronze, but of iron, glass, amber, and bone. 



If, however, nothing has come down to us immediately associated 

 with the remains of the original interment in this earn, future history 

 may have something far more interesting to record, when some suc- 

 cessful student in archaic sculptures shall have been fortunate enough 

 to discover the key for interpreting the meaning, whether ideographic 

 or symbolic, or merely ornamental, intended to be conveyed by the 

 curious, and at present mystic, characters inscribed upon the stones 

 forming the interior chambers. There is little donbt that, should one 

 of the old sculptors of these devices, by any possibility be able once 

 more to "revisit the glimpses of the moon," and be confronted with an 

 inscription on one of our modern sepulchral monuments, the reading 

 of which to us is so plain and simple, and so conformable with the 

 science of grammar, he would be as much puzzled, probably more so, 

 to make sense or meaning out of our characters, as we are to-day out 

 of his ! 



A basaltic slab, not three feet square, turned up near Rosetta, on 

 the Western mouth of the Nile, by a French officer of Engineers in 

 the month of August, 1799, at present preserved in the British 

 Museum, and now commonly known as "The Rosetta Stone," has, 

 from its fruitful contents, led to the deciphering and reading of 



* See Proceedings of R. I. A., Vol. IX., p. 355, &c. 



