Tandragee Idol

The Tandragee Idol
Material	Carved granite
Size	Height: 60 cm (24 in) Width (approx) 40 cm (16 in)[1]
Created	Iron Age
Discovered	Tandragee, County Armagh, Northern Ireland
Present location	St Patrick's Cathedral (COI), Armagh

The Tandragee Idol is the name given to a carved sandstone figure, generally dated to the Iron Age, with some sources suggesting a date as early as 1,000 BC. The sculpture was found in the 19th century in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. It is 60 cm (24 in) in height, and consists of the torso and head of a grotesque and brutish-looking figure who crosses his body with his left arm to hold his right arm in what appears to be a ritualistic pose. The idol has a crude, vulgar and gaping mouth, pierced nostrils and the stubs of a horned helmet.

The sculpture belongs to a group of similar ancient stone idols found on or near Cathedral Hill in Armagh, which were likely hidden sometime after the 12th AD century to avoid plunder during the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, and then rediscovered in the mid 19th century. Likely produced as an idol for a pre-Christian Celtic shrine, the Tandragee Idol may represent a god or mythical figure. Based on its dating and iconography, especially the positioning of the right arm, the most probable sources are the Celtic and Gallo-Roman horned god Cernunnos and the mythical Tuatha Dé Danann chieftain Nuadha of the Silver Arm, while its pose closely resembles stone idols found in Germany, in particular the 5th century BC "Celtic Prince of Glauberg" and the c. 400–800 AD Janis head from Boa Island, County Fermanagh.^[2]

Its modern provenance is uncertain but by 1932 it was in the rockery at Ballymore parish rectory in Tandragee, hence its name.Today it is kept in the crypt of St Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, along with other ancient stone idols from the "Tandragee group" rediscovered in the mid-19th century.

The Tandragee Idol is 60 cm high and carved in the round from a single block of local fine-grained, pale yellow sandstone and granite.^[3][4] The statue shows a brutish-looking figure, whose portrayal is described by the archeologist Etienne Rynne as "magnificent in its crude barbarism", and as "menacing" by the archeologist Michael J. O'Kelly.^[5][6] The figure has a squat (short and wide) physique; his head is disproportionately large compared to his body and he has no real neck.^[6] According to the American archaeologist and art historian Arthur Kingsley Porter, his head "rises sharply in the back" and resembles "a veil drawn over a comb."^[7] Usually but not always identified as male, the torso is rather sexless, but a moustache is indicated by vertical pick-marks.^[3] The figure's helmet seems to have horns, although they now are absent and indicated by two knobs (or dowels) where they would have protruded from.^[8][9]

His right arm reaches downwards diagonally, seemingly to hold his left arm.^[6] His facial features are grotesque, in particular he has thick lips on a wide and open mouth^[9] that gapes in a vulgar manner reminiscent of the Early Medieval sheela na gig style. His nose is wide and flat, and his nostrils are pierced. His closely set oval eyes were described by the archeologist Anne Ross as "large and coarse and placed in an unusually low position"^[3] between his large drooping lids and what appears to be a primitive, heavily ridged brow, which like his broad nose, may also be the outline of a helmet.^[3] Both hands have four crudely drawn and oversized fingers, and lack both thumbs and knuckles.^[5]

The modern provenance of the Tandragee Idol is uncertain. Most archeologists now believe it was found between 1834 and 1840 when St Patrick's Cathedral was undergoing an extensive renovation.^[10][11] According to the archeologist Richard, a relatively significant number of carvings, tomb stones and architectural fragments were found hidden during the renovation, some of which many have been were acquired by the English architect Lewis Nockalls Cottingham, while others were acquired by local antiquarians.^[11] The statue was in a rockery at the rectory of Ballymore Parish Church in Tandragee until 1932, "with some other unspecified sculptural fragments said to have come from Armagh".^[12][13]

It was first described in 1934 by Porter. He had viewed the idol two years earlier when it was in the possession of the widow of John McEndoo, rector of the Anglican church of St Mark in Tandragee, who did not know her husband had acquired the idol, but had the impression (since disproved) that it had been found in a peat bog in County Armagh sometime in 19th century. Following the death of McEndoo's widow in 1935, the statue was donated to the Ulster Museum in Belfast, by the rector, Canon Percy Marks.^[12][13]

In the early 1940s, the curator of Armagh County Museum, with the help and financial backing of Archbishop John Gregg, acquired many of the locally held stone heads and artefacts for the cathedral. The effort was based on the priest and theologian John Paterson's belief that it was their original find spot.^[11][14] Today the Tandragee Idol is kept in the cathedral's crypt.^[15] A cast is in the Ulster Museum.

It is unclear when the Tandragee Idol was carved, but it is generally dated to the 1st century BC, that is during the Iron Age.^[16][17][18] The archaeologist Etienne Rynne says most surviving prehistoric Irish stone heads are of pagan Celtic origin, and date from the first to the fifth century AD. Most originate from the province of Ulster.^[19]

The Tandragee Idol is thought to have originated from Cathedral Hill, Armagh, one of a group of six similarly dated Iron Age stone sculptures that Rynne said were "clearly carved in one school, perhaps even by the one hand", and is "the only really closely-knit group [of prehistoric stone idols] in Ireland.^[19] Cathedral Hill (also known as the Hill of Armagh (Irish: Ard Mhacha or The Height of the Plain) was an important pagan Celtic cult centre during the early centuries AD,^[19] succeeding nearby Navan Fort (Irish: Eamhain Mhacha). The enclosure (or ditch) around the hill is given a late prehistoric date, and has been radiocarbon dated to a terminal date range of c. 30 BC to 390 AD.^[19][10]

Stone artefacts are extremely difficult to date without context, to the extent that it is impossible to know from physical examination if they are ancient or modern. Many Irish stone idols considered ancient were found hidden on ruined church grounds, some built on much older pagan sites, and none have been found in their original or ancient context.^[11] Therefore, archaeologists often rely on art-historical dating methods, such as tracing their methodological or iconographical origins.^[19] Porter dismissed the idea that idol might be a modern hoax in 1934, writing: "One feels at once in the sculpture a vigour, an imaginative power, which puts the possibility of a hoax out of the question. We are in the presence of a genuine, and very gripping work of art."^[12]

Like the 1st century AD Corleck Head, the Tandragee Idol, along with the other figures of the Cathedral Hill group, may have been produced for a pagan shrine or cult worship site.^[8] The group also includes a figure in the same pose as the Tandragee Idol, a figure with a similar face as the Tandragee Idol but with a dog or wolf coming out of his back, a 'Sun God' figure akin to Sol Invictus, a bearded head, and three individual dogs or bears.^[19][20]

Porter believed the horns on the Tandragee Idol were the key to understanding its origin and meaning. He likened it to the 1st century AD low relief head of the ancient Celtic god Cernunnos on the Pillar of the Boatmen, in the Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris.^[21] Although Cernunnos was venerated mostly in the north-eastern region of Gaul (roughly present-day France, Belgium and Luxembourg) and does not appear in Irish literary sources, Porter speculated that because horned gods are extremely rare in early Celtic iconography, the Tandragee Idol may show influence from Gaulish sculpture and tradition.^[21] Porter goes on to observe that other horned figures appear in Irish mythology, including in the story of Conall Cernach, the foster brother of the Ulster warrior and demigod Cú Chulainn.^[7]

Art historians and folklorists such as Helen Lanigan Wood and Ellen Etlinger associate the idol with Nuadha of the Silver Arm, the mythical chieftain of the Tuatha Dé Danann. According to legend, Nuadha lost an arm in battle and had it replaced with a silver prosthetic, hence the link to the Tandragee figure, which seems to cling to its detached left arm.^[22][23] According to Lanigan Wood, the sculpture shows Nuada formally dressed his horned helmet, proudly displaying his newly restored arm.^[24]

Archaeologist Patrick Gleeson cautioned against viewing Celtic Early Iron Age artifacts such as the Tandragee Idol through a purely pan-Celtic lens. He noted how "deities are often plucked from later texts to explain the function and symbolism of items like the Corleck Head or Tandragee Idol, much as ethnic labels have been used to explain material phenomena regarded as Romano-British".^[25] Mark Williams gives a date of c. 1000 BC and argues that the link with Nuadha is "at best only a possibility", given the legend of Nuadha's silver arm does not appear in records until much later.^[26]

The Tandragee Idol has been compared to the c. 400–800 AD double-headed stone figure in the cemetery on Boa Island, County Fermanagh a stone idold found in Böblingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and a life-sized La Tène figure found in 1996 at the Glauberg hillfort in Hesse, Germany. Each of which show a figure holding a seemingly detached arm held by their other arm, all showing the holding arm at a similar upwards angle, although the positions of the arms differ from the left holding the right arm to vice versa.^[27][28]

Writing in 1997, the Irish archeologist Fergus O'Farrell concluded that "the common pose of these figures must have had some significance not yet recognised or understood."^[29]

• St. Patrick's Cathedral
• Iron Age Irish Helmets, video essay, Arthurian Historian