Book of Durrow

Book of Durrow, second half of the 7th century, Trinity College Dublin. Made about a hundred years before the Book of Kells, it is the oldest surviving fully illustrated gospel book from Britain and Ireland, and its exact date and birthplace are still argued over. This is folio 85v, a carpet page: a whole page given over to ornament with no text at all. Trace one ribbon through the interlaced roundels and watch it weave over and under its neighbors in red, yellow and green on a dark ground, around a small cross knotted into the central circle.