A 22lb lump of butter dating back 2,000 years has been discovered buried in an Irish bog - and it's still edible.
Jack Conway, a turf cutter from Maghera, northern Ireland, discovered the butter last week.
Bog butter was often used to preserve butter but experts claimed it could have been buried as an offering to the gods.
Andy Halpin, assistant keeper in the museum's Irish Antiquities Division said, "theoretically the stuff is still edible."
Burying the butter was a good method of preserving it, the lack of oxygen conditions of the bog would help preserve it.
The butter was found 12 feet below the ground, then it was transported to the National Museum to be carbon dated.
Halpin, says that the butter was significant because of its burial place. It was found near the town of Drakerath, where, long ago, 11 townlands and the boundaries of three ancient private areas met together.
“These bogs in those times were inaccessible, mysterious places, it is at the juncture of three separate kingdoms, and politically it was like a no-man's-land, that is where it all hangs together."
Bog butter is butter that has been buried in peat, the earliest known examples date back almost 2,000 years.
There was no discovery of any kind of a cover over the butter, which led Mr. Halpin to believe the it was possibly not intended to be use, but instead used as an offering.
The butter was found at the crossroads of three separate kingdoms and basically no one went there. Halpin described it as an “inaccessible, a no-man’s-land.”
Savina Donohoe, curator of Cavan County Museum, said, 'It did smell like butter.'
'After I had held it in my hands, my hands really did smell of butter.
She added: 'There was even a smell of butter in the room it was in.'
The butter will have a new home, in a refrigerated case in the Cavan County Museum.
