By Durham Cathedral, Who Am I?

Alongside Durham Cathedral is an old grave yard, where I believe priests, bishops and the elite towns people have been buried.

Roaming around Durham Cathedral in Northeast England, I was busy learning about Norman architecture, the imprisonment of the Scots in the Cathedral and the bishop-princes appointed by William the Conquerer. But there was over a thousand years of history made here, and scores more facts to absorb.

Then, my attention was drawn to some unmarked tombs just outside the Cathedral.

Unusual grave marker outside Durham Cathedral.

Later research on the web provided the names of a bishop, a priest and a dean of the Cathedral buried outside the walls, but there are many more tombs than three, leaving the mystery of the tomb’s identity or date unsolved.

What image do you decipher in this well worn tombstone?

Perhaps it is better to consider this site a place for meditation and prayer. The questions raised by death and the what happens to each of us after death have vexed the human mind for millennia. It may benefit us more to reflect on the human condition and our questions about life after death than to seek the identity of any one particular grave.