What is recorded here

Half a metre of worn stone, broken at the top right corner, still stands in Clonmacnoise with a stepped cross carved inside a double line. Petrie read ALAR on it in 1822, but rain and time have taken the letters back. The cross arm itself forms the inner frame, as if the boundary and the symbol were one act of making. Whoever laid it there did not decorate a grave so much as draw a room around the dead, then let the whole room dissolve into the field.

Clonmacnoise grave-slab inventory (1992) number: CLN00058 Dimensions: H 0.549, W 0.29, T 0.025 Outline cross with stepped centre inside a two line frame, the inner line of which is made up by the arm of the cross. Inscription: Petrie recorded it as 'ALAR'. The inscription is now lost. Evidence of discovery: Petrie 1822 Condition: Very worn and weathered. Top right corner broken. National Monuments Service, Photo number: 81-84, 440 Stokes, M. (1878) Christian Inscriptions in the Irish language, Vol 1, p XXVIII, no. 73. The Clonmacnoise inventory was compiled by the Office of Public Works. A copy of the record for this slab is available for inspection in the relevant Archaeological Survey of Ireland (SMR) file. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien. Date of upload: 23 May 2011

Date likely to the early medieval period, possibly 8th to 10th century AD, given the cross-slabs found in the Clonmacnoise area are typically associated with monastic sites of that era. The stepped centre and double-lined frame suggest a Christian funerary or commemorative function, common in early Irish monastic cemeteries.

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