I saw The Book of Kells last month in Dublin, Ireland. I bet most of you would have reacted to this ancient manuscript the same way I did. For all the pain and suffering we endure in our day-to-day media grind, our training helps us appreciate media that really works.

When most people are exposed to a great newspaper story, or a great TV documentary, or a great work of art, they might say, ‘boy that’s great.’ Media people, on the other hand, want to see what makes the media vehicle tick. We need to deconstruct the media into basic communication components. We are in this business because we’re curious.

And that’s how I found myself approaching The Book of Kells, or at least two of the four volumes of this ancient Latin text of the gospels, sitting on display in a climate-controlled glass viewing table in the Treasury beneath the Old Library at Trinity College in Dublin.

I lined up, huddled around and then snuck a peak. That brief glimpse of just two of the 600 lavishly-decorated leaves in this ninth-century book blew me away. And I’m not the only one. Novelist Umberto Eco described The Book of Kells as ‘the product of a cold-blooded hallucination.’ According to the 13th-century historian Giraldus Cambrensis, Kells is ‘the work, not of men, but of angels.’

But once the initial shock of seeing this magnificent relic passed, the media analysis discipline kicked in. I needed answers to the same kinds of questions media people ask when they’re seeing a marketing problem for the first time: when?, where?, who?, how much?, why? These questions are to media people what a set of wrenches are to an auto mechanic. They are the tools of our media trade.

Kells is an enigma because the answers to the when? and where? questions are subject to scholastic dispute, with most points of view narrowing the book’s origins to a monastery on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland in the late 700s, or perhaps the county of Kells in Ireland, early in the 800s. Some believe the book was amongst sacred relics rescued by monks fleeing from Viking attacks on Iona.

The book is an enigma because there is no firm answer to the who? question either. The authors are unknown.

It might have been the direct creative product of two, three, or maybe four different individuals. But dozens of people must have been indirectly involved in its creation. Pigments for the coloured inks had to be gathered from all over Europe. The book is written on specially prepared calfskin, called vellum, culled from a herd of over a thousand cattle. So there must have been scores of people involved in picking berries, driving cattle and filling ink pots to get this monumental relic completed.

The book is an enigma because exactly how much? of the original still exists is also unknown. Clearly, portions are missing. Some pages appear to be only partially completed. The book survived Viking raids, arson, and regicides. It was once lost and recovered. Its ornamental bindings and covers were probably stolen a thousand years ago.

The book is an enigma because all of these tourists and I were down below Trinity College’s cathedral of books, staring at something we couldn’t even begin to read, which begs the question why?

The script is described as ‘insular majuscule.’ The text is based on a version of the Bible completed by St. Jerome in AD 384. The language is Old Latin. We’re all looking at letters we can’t discern, in a language we can’t read, regarding a subject we know nothing about. So that means we’re all here to look at the pictures.

Ireland’s motherlode of Celtic artistic tradition springs from these images of lions, snakes, fishes, peacocks and doves, angels and mice, grapes and human figures. The graphic tableau is a rich blend of pagan and Christian imagery.

Why would this one-off picture book have been created? Books of this era were instruments of oral tradition – more a radio medium than a print medium – read out by the literate few to the illiterate multitudes.

But many of the pages in The Book of Kells are virtually illegible and so it couldn’t have been used for daily readings. The book is too big to pocket. Some suggest it was a piece of altar furniture, designed to impress visiting church officials on special occasions. Maybe it was created simply because the required talent existed with the required amount time on their hands along with the required resources.

And so we don’t know where or when the book was created, who created it, how much of it still exists or even why it was created in the first place. Our handy five media interrogation questions can’t seem to penetrate the book’s wall of time. The Book of Kells, which was not originally designed with communication utility in mind, has become one of the most powerful communication devices in existence today.

Maybe we just have to face it. There are some media out there we will never understand.

Rob Young is one of the founders of Toronto-based Harrison, Young, Pesonen & Newell, now known as PHD Canada. He can be reached at ryoung@phdca.com.