Flotta Stone
The Flotta Stone (also Altar Slab from Flotta) is an 8th century cross-slab found in Lurdy on the Orkney island of Flotta and now in the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh . It is a carved sandstone plate that was found in a ruin that is said to belong to an old church. After the stone was owned by George Petrie from Kirkwall until 1877 , it was bought by the Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities.
It is a 1.65 m long, 0.8 m wide and about 8 cm thick slab of gray sandstone that is damaged in the edge area and split in the middle . Two vertical grooves on the back indicate that it probably belonged to an altar. A raised edge surrounds the plate, and in the center of a bordered square field there is a completely symmetrical Greek cross with the four rounded corners of the arms, which are usual in the Celtic forms. The arms of the cross are decorated with a knot pattern. The central part of the cross has flaked off, so that the roughly figure-eight-shaped structure does not reveal itself properly. It was carved between 700 and 800.
Individual evidence
Web links
- Description Engl. + Image
- Entry on Flotta Stone in Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland's database
Coordinates: 58 ° 49 '44.6 " N , 3 ° 5' 34.2" W.