A human cadaver that has been naturally mummified within a peat bog is known as a bog body.
The BBC reports, “Compressed by the peat that has preserved his remains, he looks like a squashed, dark leather holdall.
Apart, that is, from one forlorn arm that stretches out and upward and tells us something of the deliberate and extremely violent death that he suffered 500 years before Tutankhamen was born.
Cashel Man is now being studied at the National Museum of Ireland’s research base in Collins Barracks, Dublin. He was discovered in 2011 by a bog worker in Cashel bog in County Laois.”
Experts say that the remains of Cashel Man are extremely well preserved for his age. Radiocarbon dating suggests that he is the earliest bog body with intact skin known anywhere in the world. He is from the early Bronze Age in Ireland about 4,000 years ago.
It is believed the mummy is the body of king who suffered a violent death:
“When an Irish king is inaugurated, he is inaugurated in a wedding to the goddess of the land.
“It is his role to ensure through his marriage to the goddess that the cattle will be protected from plague and the people will be protected from disease.
“If these calamities should occur, the king will be held personally responsible. He will be replaced, he will pay the price, he will be sacrificed.”
Eamonn says that Cashel Man fits this pattern because his body was found on a border line between territories and within sight of the hill where he would have been crowned. He suffered significant violent injuries to his back, and his arm shows evidence of a cut from a sword or axe.
However, a critical piece of information that would cement this argument is missing.
Because Cashel Man’s chest was destroyed by the milling machine that uncovered him, the researchers are unable to examine the state of his nipples.
In the other two bog body cases, says Eamonn Kelly, the nipples had been deliberately damaged.
“We’re looking at the bodies of kings who have been decommissioned, who have been sacrificed. As part of that decommissioning, their nipples are mutilated.
“In the Irish tradition they could no longer serve as king if their bodies were mutilated in this way. This is a decommissioning of the king in this life and the next.”