Book of Kells, the Long Room, and the Dublin Scavenger Hunt

So yesterday we went to Dublin to see the Book of Kells and the Long Room at Trinity College. First off I forgot my camera so I wasn't able to take pictures so all the pictures on this post is off Google.
First we got to Trinity and took a tour of the campus which ended at the bookshop that is the entrance to the Book of Kells. We went into the exhibit that just had all the information about the Book of Kells and how it was written, who wrote it, and all about the ink and the paper that was used to create it.

The Book of Kells is written on vellum which is literally calf skin. It is estimated that about 185 calves were used to create the Book of Kells. (Where was the ASPCA when you needed them? Joking). The original book was one book but because the original binding hasn't survived the test of time, the book is shown as two separate books.
The writing of the Book of Kells is in Latin so most of us could never understand it except that the Book of Kells is the first four Gospels so anyone who has memorized all four of the Gospels can know exactly what the book is saying. (Haha) Anyway, there is a lot of illustrations throughout the Book of Kells, illustrations that are vastly beautiful and must have taken much money and time to create. Some of the ink pigments found in the pictures came from as far away as the Middle East. The blue color in the pictures come from what is called lapis lazuli which I have no idea what it means. But it came from what is now Afghanistan and could have also been made from indigo or woad. The white color comes from chalk and the yellow actually came from orpiment or arsenic around the Mediterranean area. Also from that same area came the red and orange colors which were created from the blood of a beetle. The information said blood of a pregnant beetle but since blood is blood from any thing I don't see what difference it would make.

The Book of Kells had at least four scribes working on it because of the differences in certain pages. One scribe, (Scribe A) wrote St. John and seemed to have copied the gospel and then given the pages to someone else to have them decorated. Scribe B did certain pages throughout the whole book and used many different colors of ink to write with and did lots of calligraphic flourishes throughout the book. Scribes C and D did most of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and seemed to be fairly good at writing and decorating.
Sometime in the Book of Kells one will see words that have a neat row of dots through it. That means the word was a mistake and the dots are equivalent to teenagers scribbling out a word. There is actually a whole page that was copied twice so the second page has red crosses around the edges and throughout the text to inform the reader that this page may be skipped over.

The Chi Rho page is the most famous page of the whole Book of Kells. It's actually Christi autem generatio since the Chi Rho page is the illustrated page right before the start of Matthew but it is called Chi Rho because that is the abbreviated Greek form of Christ. On the page there is a sense of elementalism so help show meaning to the scriptures. Two angels holding the gospels represent Air, 2 rats holding the Eucharist being watched by 2 cats with mice on thier backs represent Earth and Water is shown by an otter with a fish in it's mouth. The fish is an ancient symbol of Christianity and it was used as a code to figure out who was a Christian and who wasn't, and the otter diving into the water also symbolized baptism. The peacock is on the page because in ancient days the peacock was thought to symbolize God's incorruptibility, and the blond man on the page could very well represent Christ.

After looking at all this information you walked through a doorway and got to see the Book of Kells along with the Book of Durrow which was written about the same time. They show different pages every day but we were able to see the illustration of Jesus' temptation from Luke which was absolutely beautiful and astounding. Then you went up a flight of stairs, turned a corner - and died and went to heaven.
Seriously - I thought I had. If there were to be some sort of library in heaven the Long Room at Trinity College would be a great representation of it. The room was huge and long and filled from floor to ceiling in old text that is mainly from the time before English was invented and most of the text is in Latin and the sections of the library are labeled in Latin and all I wanted to do was break the rules and slip under the ropes blocking off the books and look at them. I LOVE BOOKS ESPECIALLY OLD ONES and I felt like crying upon seeing the room. I could literally build a room off the Long Room and live there, just pouring over the texts like there was no tomorrow. I would find enjoyment in that. I love the Long Room...it is a beautiful thing. And the really cool thing about Trinity's Long Room is that it's just like the Long Room at Cambridge except that the one here in Dublin is like...12 feet or 12 meters longer than the one over there. I think that was pretty awesome.

Then we ate lunch and were split up into groups for our scavenger hunt which basically had us going all over Dublin looking for landmarks that are famous throughout Dublin like the Ha'Penny Bridge, the statue of Molly Malone and of James Joyce. We had to find the General Post Office or the GPO which was partially destroyed during the Easter Uprising of 1916. We saw the proclamation that ignited that rebellion in the Long Room. That was pretty awesome - it was almost like reading the Declaration of Independence - but of another country. It was pretty fun and my group found all by two places before we had to head back to Greystones for dinner.
All in all it was a wonderful day and I am glad that I got to see what I got to see.