Replica of the Tau Cross at Roughan Hill

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There are just ten examples of the Tau Cross (Crux Commissa) left in Ireland. They are located at Roughan Hill in County Clare (this one is a replica; the original is in the Clare Heritage Centre in Corofin), Tory Island, Tawnagh in County Sligo, Kilmalkedar Monastic Settlement near Dingle (there are two here in the graveyard), St Begnet’s Church Dalkey, Carrownaseer North in Galway, Killegar in Wicklow, Ballypatrick, County Tipperary and one that originally stood on Church Island, Lough Currane, Waterville in County Kerry and is currently displayed in the Municipal Museum in Cork. Using a cross in a religious context in the pre-Christian era is likely to have been almost universal, and in a lot of cases it would have associated with the worship of nature in some form. Later, the Tau Cross (or Crux Commissa) would come closely associated with St Anthony as well as St Francis and his Franciscans. One of the most notable forms of these pre-Christian crosses is the tau cross. Taking their name from its similarity to the Greek letter ‘T’, these crosses were often used by the ancient Egyptians. The Tau Cross started life in Egypt as a pagan symbol and was later adopted by Christians (Copts). Various designs of this cross were employed by nominal Christians living in Egypt. The Egyptian hieroglyph representing life is called the ankh. The ankh has the appearance of a tau-type cross topped with a loop, a design used extensively on Coptic Christian gravestones.