1,200-year-old Book of Psalms unearthed in Irish bog

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Ireland's National Museum said Wednesday that a 1,200-year-old Book of Psalms found by a construction worker in a bog was comparable in archaeological significance to "an Irish equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls."

The discovery of the ancient Psalter last Thursday was said by museum officials to be remarkable for two main reasons the fact that it survived at all for so long in boggy terrain, and the manner in which it was spotted by a construction worker who halted a mechanical digger just in time to save it from destruction.

A spokeswoman for the museum in Dublin, Aoife Demel, said in a telephone interview that there was no question of a hoax, since several experts had examined it.

A news release from the Museum said, "In discovery terms this Irish equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls is being hailed by the museum's experts as the greatest find ever from a European bog.

"It is impossible to say how the manuscript ended up in the bog," the release continued. "It may have been lost in transit or dumped after a raid, possibly more than 1,000 to 1,200 years ago."

Bernard Meehan, a manuscripts expert at Trinity College in Dublin, said it was the first discovery of its kind in 200 years. The manuscript of approximately 20 pages was discovered July 20 in the Irish Midlands when a construction worker spotted something in a bog he was excavating for commercial potting soil. Museum officials declined to pinpoint the bog's location because archaeologists were still exploring the site.

The museum said the book had been found open at a page showing Psalm 83 in Latin. The psalms were written on vellum. "The pages appear to be those of a slim, large-format book with a wraparound vellum or leather cover from which the book block has slipped," the museum news release said.

Raghnall Floinn, the museum's head of collections, said each page of the document contained about 40 lines of script with about 45 letters a line.

"While part of Psalm 83 is legible," the news release said, "the extent to which other psalms or additional texts are preserved will only be determined by painstaking work by a team of invited experts probably operating over a long time in the museum laboratory."

In later English-language versions, Psalm 83 exhorts God to act against conspirators plotting to ensure "that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance."

The probable age of the manuscript would place it in the same early medieval period as the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the Christian gospels that has been on view in the Old Library at Trinity College since the 19th century, according to the college's Web site, www.tcd.ie/Library/heritage/kells.php.