lunula
- Museum number
- WG.31
- Title
- Object: The Blessington lunula
- Description
-
Gold lunula. Flat sheet crescent of beaten gold with quadrangular terminals. It is decorated with a finely-incised and complex geometric pattern. The horns are decorated with horizontal patterns of horizontal lines, concentric triangles, bands of diamond shaped motifs, triangles touching at their apex filled with horizontal lines, rows of small oblique lines, rows of small triangles a single band of triangle-diamond-triangle shaped motifs filled with intersecting parallel lines and void spaces. The horn’s inner and outer edges are decorated with a border of horizontal lines. Four concentric triangles separate the horns from the rest of the body. The decoration extends down the body in the form of a border parallel with the inner and outer edges. The border consists of a series of parallel lines and rows of triangles.
- Production date
- 2400BC-2000BC (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 135.51 millimetres (inner)
-
Diameter: 221 millimetres (outer)
-
Length: 20.19 millimetres (terminal)
-
Weight: 67.20 grammes
-
Thickness: 0.15 millimetres (body)
-
Thickness: 0.40 millimetres (terminal)
-
Width: 66.54 millimetres (body centre)
-
Width: 39.16 millimetres (horn maximum)
-
Width: 2.05 millimetres (horn minimum)
-
Width: 15.75 millimetres (terminal)
- Location
- On display (G51/dc9)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2023 28 Apr - 30 Sep, Capo di Ponte, MUPRE-Museo Nazionale della Preistoria della Valle Camonica, Under the Same Sun
2022 17 Feb - 17 Jul, London, BM, G30, The world of Stonehenge
2018-2019 Oct-Apr, Wiltshire, Stonehenge Visitor Centre, Making New Worlds
1985 1 Aug-13 Oct, Edinburgh, National Museum of Scotland, Symbols of Power at the Time of Stonehenge
Has Mount
- Condition
- The lunula shows little sign of damage beyond three small holes and accompanying tears in the body.
- Acquisition date
- 1909
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- WG.31
