History

Roman Gold

3 March 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History

Much of the gold that went into Anglo-Saxon jewellery such as the Sutton Hoo buckle was recycled Roman gold, taken from Roman coinage. Rome still had prestige and a nimbus of power that was reflected in the use of old Roman gold as the basis for the jewellery of kings.

The prestige of Roman gold was greatly enhanced in the seventh and eighth centuries by the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Rome was both the name of the giants who had made the still hugely impressive ruins that covered the landscape and the present residence of the Pope, God’s representative on Earth, who had, in the person of Gregory the Great, personally sponsored the mission to the Anglo-Saxons. The pilgrim path to Rome was well trodden by Anglo-Saxons from their conversion onwards, beginning with the extraordinarily well-travelled Benedict Biscop – who made five trips to Rome – and continuing throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, culminating in the two trips Alfred the Great made to Rome when still a child.

Of course, few Anglo-Saxons had the resources or time to make the pilgrimage but the fact that Rome existed, suspended in imagination somewhere between reality and Eden, added lustre and gravitas to the remembered Rome while surrounding papal Rome with the nimbus of Empire.

Adam’s Bridge

26 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History

Adam’s Bridge, or Rama Setu, is a long chain of low-lying shoals and reefs connecting a spur from Sri Lanka’s north-east coast to the long ribbon of Dhanushkodi beach running south-west from Pamban Island into the ocean, pointing its long finger to Sri Lanka.

It’s a haunting place to visit. In places the spit of land is so narrow that the houses that remain have the Indian Ocean across their front gardens and the Bay of Bengal lapping against their back gardens. There was a town on the spit of land, reachable by railway. But on the night of 22/23 December 1964, a tropical storm intensified to a cyclone and hit Dhanushkodi town, killing 1,700 people there as well as the 115 passengers aboard the Pamban-Dhanushkodi train that was only a few hundred yards short of its terminus when the storm wave struck, washing the train away. The town was abandoned after the storm and remains uninhabited and largely submerged today. 

Trade links between Sri Lanka and India go back to antiquity. Garnets from the island were traded up the west coast of India to the trade ports and held there, waiting for the merchants who sailed over the sea to arrive in the summer, carried by the monsoon winds. The merchants sold their own goods, bought garnets and other commodities, particularly spices, from India and returned with the autumn trade winds.

Having crossed the Indian Ocean, it was a relatively quick passage up the Red Sea before unloading and making the short crossing to Alexandria, where the garnets were sold on to merchants eager to take them further west and north until, finally, the bag of red garnets took ship again, crossing the rough waters of the outer ocean to reach Britain.

Sailing With the Monsoon

26 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History
Photo by SajjadF

The monsoon, and its accompanying winds, provided a regular and reliable way for boats to cross the Indian Ocean. At some point before 100 BC, mariners discovered that it was possible to sail directly to India, cutting across the Indian Ocean, rather than following the coast.

Taking their courage in their hands, sailors had sailed out into the Arabian Sea in late spring, leaving the sight of land behind. Through most of history, mariners were better described as coasters, hopping along beside the land and rarely leaving sight of it. Only three peoples in history discovered blue-water navigation: the Norse, the Polynesians and the Portuguese. The Indian Ocean mariners were not true blue-water navigators, but what they had discovered was the rhythm of the monsoon. In late spring and early summer, India heats up. Hot air rises off the panting earth and pulls in moist, cool air from the south-west. Mariners discovered that if they put out into the Arabian Sea at the right time of year, they could hitch a ride with the steady north-east winds blowing up to India. These late spring, early summer north-easterlies blow steady and true, carrying ancient sailors to the ports along the coast of north-western India and monsoon rain, blessed, holy rain to the parched interior.

Merchants riding the monsoon winds arrive in India in the summer, renew their old contacts, sell, buy and wait. They wait for the hot earth to cool down as summer draws down to autumn. Then, as the ground cools, in October and November, dry, cool air blows down from the Himalayas, out over the sea: regular, reliable winds blowing south-west to carry the ships and the merchants back over the ocean.

The monsoon cycle allowed merchants to make regular trips to and from India within six months, thus freeing the other half of the year to sell on the goods bought from the great trading ports in India to merchants selling into the Mediterranean and beyond.

Garnets From Far Away

26 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History

The major sources for the garnets that adorned Anglo-Saxon swords and jewellery were Sri Lanka and India.

That is a long way for the garnets to travel. We think of the people of this time as insular and little travelled, and that was true for many, but it was not true for all. While there’s no evidence to suggest that any Anglo-Saxon gem merchants travelled all the way to Sri Lanka before returning with sacks of red gems, the trade was sufficiently well established to ensure an excellent supply of garnets for Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths.

The Leftie King

21 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History

Sue Brunning, curator of European Early Medieval Collections at the British Museum, noticed something else about the Sutton Hoo sword. One side of the pommel was subtly more elaborate and ornate than the other. Brunning realised that the more ornate side faced outwards when the sword rested in its scabbard.

The most common way to wear a sword then was for it to hang at rest quite high up the trunk, with the pommel just below the heart, alongside the torso. As such, the pommel made an ideal hand rest.

With this high position for the sword, the natural way to draw the sword was with the opposite hand, drawing it across the body.

So, a right-handed swordsman would carry the sword on his left. But the Sutton Hoo sword had the richer side of its pommel design on the wrong side if it was worn on the left: sitting there, the less elaborate side of its design would have been on display. The wear patterns on the pommel were also wrong if it had been worn on the left.

Brunning realised that the only sensible explanation was that the wearer of the Sutton Hoo sword had been left-handed.

It’s not often that we can learn such an intimate detail about a person who lived 1,500 years ago and whose name we do not even know for certain. If the sword’s wielder was Rædwald, king of the East Angles, history has left us no tale of him being Rædwald Left-Hand. Only the sword tells us that.

El Cid in All About History

21 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History

The new issue of All About History is on sale, in shops and online, and I’m proud to say that I wrote the cover feature on the great Spanish hero, El Cid. My interest in Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar was sparked by watching the great Charlton Heston/Sophia Loren film, El Cid, when I was a child: the real man was, if anything, even more extraordinary than the Hollywood version. Get issue 153 of All About History and learn about the knight who never lost a battle.

The Sutton Hoo Sword

20 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History
The original Sutton Hoo sword and a modern replica

There’s a secret hidden in plain sight on the Sutton Hoo sword. The pommel was on display at the British Museum for 70 years before Sue Brunning, the curator of European Early Medieval Collections at the museum, noticed something interesting about it.

There is a string of wound gold wire running around the pommel. Looking carefully at the wound wire, Brunning noticed that, at one end of the pommel, the wire was worn, the clear ridges of the rest of the wire smoothed down to little more than undulations.

Gold is a soft metal. A hand resting upon one side of a pommel will wear gold wound wire smooth.

Brunning realised that the pommel of the Sutton Hoo sword had the wear it displayed because the man who had worn and wielded the sword in life had habitually rested his hand upon its pommel when the sword rested in its scabbard.

It was one of those details that suddenly draws back the veil of years and brings us face to face with the real, living man who had worn the sword.

Cursed Gold

20 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History
Photo by Jon Callas from San Jose, USA

An Anglo-Saxon king was caught in a cleft stick of expectation and necessity: to attract warriors to his warband, he had to distribute gold and gifts to his men. As the Staffordshire Hoard demonstrates, one of the main ways of acquiring this gold was by defeating enemies in battle.

But the constant need to acquire treasure led to further conflicts with more kings, inciting blood feuds and the sort of reckless hatred that must have fuelled the assassin King Cwichelm sent to kill Edwin: the unnamed assassin knew that, even if he succeeded, he was embarked on a suicide mission. That he was willing to die to kill Edwin suggests the assassin had reasons of personal vengeance to accept the commission of King Cwichelm.

The legends of cursed gold suggest an uneasy understanding on the part of the king’s bards and the warriors themselves of the price in hatred they paid for taking blood-wet treasure – and the likely consequence for themselves in taking it.

Very few of the kings of the sixth and seventh centuries died of natural causes. Even those who rose to the greatest power – Æthelfrith, Edwin, Oswald, Penda – were brought down by the turning of fortune or the alliance of enemies united by their hatred for the high king. In the warrior culture of the time, there was little way to disentangle gold lust and power politics, for the two were intertwined. The legends of cursed gold hint at the consequences of this fateful linkage.

Blood-red Garnets That Glitter

16 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History

In firelight, garnets glitter. You need to see garnets in the shifting light of a fire to appreciate the life such light gives to garnets.

Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths mounted garnets to accentuate this facet of garnets. They mounted the garnet on a thin gold backing into which little pyramids had been pressed. The base of the garnet was filed into shape to fit the gold pyramid and then mounted on it. Light, passing through the garnet, hit the base pyramid of gold and then was reflected back out of the garnet, giving it a sort of double glow.

Looking at some of the intricate cloisonné work of Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths, such as the shoulder clasps excavated at Sutton Hoo, one can only marvel at the detail of the work that went into making them.

The Staffordshire Hoard

16 February 2025
Edoardo
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Categories: History
Photo by David Rowan, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

The Staffordshire Hoard has transformed our understanding of the 6th and 7th centuries. Before Terry Herbert’s metal detector went beep, we had found 13 gold pommels in the British Isles of contemporary date. The hoard has 74.

While the burial at Sutton Hoo had an exceptional sword interred with the body, the norm for warrior burials across Europe was much simpler swords, with their furniture made of base metals. Working with these findings, archaeologists had assumed that swords such as the Sutton Hoo sword were truly swords fit for a king, exceptional blades fitted out exceptionally.

However, the hoard demonstrates conclusively that, at least for the period between 570 and 650, swords fitted with the richest of hilts were the weapons of the warrior aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon Britain and not just their ruling kings.