The Staffordshire Hoard: Biblical Inscription

"Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee," reads the Latin inscription on this strip of gold--a fitting bit of Bible verse for a war-torn place and time, Britain in the Dark Ages (roughly A.D. 500 to 1000). 

The silver gilt strip bearing a Biblical inscription in Latin is one of the most significant and controversial finds in the Staffordshire Hoard.

Rivet holes show that it was originally fastened to another, larger object. We are not yet sure what this was, but it might have been something like a reliquary or the cover of a Bible. A decorative stone, possibly a garnet, was set into the now empty mount at one end of the strip, whilst an animal head adorns the other end.

Incised into each face of the strip is a verse from the Latin Bible (Numbers 10:35). The text is slightly different on the two sides, but it is clear that the outer side is the most important one since the incisions for the letters have been filled with a dark, silver compound known as niello. There are two spelling mistakes in the Latin.

This suitably warlike outer inscription reads (mis-spellings bolded and underlined):

'Surge domine et disepentur inimici tui et fugent qui oderunt te a facie tua'

The text should read:

'Surge domine et dissipentur inimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua'

When translated, the inscription reads “rise up, o Lord, and may thy enemies be scattered and those who hate thee be driven from thy face”.

Michelle Brown, Professor of Medieval Manuscript Studies, has suggested the style of lettering dates from the seventh or early eighth centuries. The relatively crude lettering may have been the work of someone more used to writing on wax tablets.

The Staffordshire Hoard: Mystery Object

Three pieces of the Hoard have been identified as belonging to one object, but no one is sure what the object once was.

Conservators have discovered that three gold, garnet and enamel pieces from the Staffordshire Hoard which bore no immediately obvious relation to each other fit together to form a beautifully perplexing mystery object. 

The millefiori stud, a gold mount with a collar of garnets and a glass enameled checkerboard surface, has a rectangular hole on the under side surrounded by four smaller round holes. A small gold cylinder decorated with cloisonné garnets has a rectangular protuberance of silver on one end and four round holes. The cylinder’s tab A fits into the millefiori’s slot B perfectly, and the four holes on both pieces align.

On the bottom end, the cylinder has another set of four matching holes with a torn piece of silver plate in the center. That torn plate in turn matches precisely the torn silver in the center of an elaborate gold cloisonné garnet circular object . The silver plate in the middle was riveted to the gold circle by four rivets, same as the holes on the other two pieces. Those four rivet holes show up on the other side of of the circular object, too, so our mystery object has at least one more part.

(Aesopian interlude: as historian David Starkey noted at the time, this is why it’s so important to keep archaeological discoveries intact in their proper context. If the hoard had been broken up and sold to the highest bidder, those pieces could have been scattered to the four corners of the earth.)

As for what it might have been used for, researchers have proposed several possibilities.

The Staffordshire Hoard: Gold and Garnet Objects

Gold and garnet bird of prey from the Staffordshire Hoard

 

The Staffordshire Hoard: Gold and garnet sword pyramid with figures of birds.

 

Closeup of garnet object from Staffordshire Hoard showing foil backing

Gold zoomorphic mount

The Staffordshire Hoard: Millefiori stud

This small stud, surrounded by gold and garnets, is a great example of early work with millefiori. Millefiori means 'One thousand flowers'.

Millefiori is an early glasswork technique, which was also found in the Sutton Hoo haul.

It is likely that the millefiori stud would have decorated a larger item.

You can see the intricately patterned gold foil that backs the garnets here! Millefiori stud

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The Staffordshire Hoard: Sword pyramid

The Staffordshire Hoard is remarkable for the extraordinary quantity of sword fittings. Most are of gold and many are beautifully inlaid with garnets.

Such elaborate and expensive decoration would have marked out the weapon as the property of the highest echelons of nobility.

The discovery of a single sword pyramid is a notable event - to find several pairs together is absolutely unprecedented.

The sword pyramid is one of a pair. These pyramids are hollow inside, with a bar across the opening rather like on a belt buckle.

Pyramids like this have been found in a number of Anglo-Saxon graves, lying beside sword scabbards. The pyramids would have adorned a leather strap that would have been attached to a scabbard (which is a cover for a sword).  Straps like this are mentioned in the Viking sagas, where they are called ‘peace bands’. They could be tied around the handle of the sword, securing it in place in the scabbard so warriors were not able to draw their swords suddenly in anger.

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The Staffordshire Hoard: Seax hilt plate

The Old English word seax is used to describe a wide variety of single-edged knives. These range from the small knives people wore at their belt and used for eating and other everyday purposes to long versions that were essentially short, single-edged swords.

Most seaxes had quite plain handles, but this hilt fitting from the Staffordshire Hoard must have belonged to a truly spectacular knife. It is made of solid gold and decorated with a beautifully worked pattern of interlaced animals. These are largely  made up from very small pieces of garnet, but scientific analysis carried out on this object in Paris late last year revealed that the animals’ eyes are actually tiny little globules of red glass.

The sword hilt plate features style II zoomorphic decoration. The plate is lozenge shaped, with a central hole mirroring the cross section of the seax blade. A seax blade has one cutting edge and a flat back to the blade, rather like a modern carving knife.

At either edge of the hilt plate are two small holes originally for fixing the plate in place. Both are encircled by a fine beaded gold wire, which appears to have been laid over matching circles incised in the underlying gold sheet. One of the circles has been deformed by this line, which can be clearly seen.

The pin or rivets which originally held the plate in place using these holes are unfortunately missing.

The rest of the upper surface of the hilt plate is filled with a running pattern of interlinking animals, each holding the leg of the animal in front in its mouth. The animals are recorded as belonging to style II decoration.

There are four such animals to each side of the central blade hole and both sets of four are facing in the same direction, that is with heads pointed towards the cutting edge of the blade.

The edges and underside of the hilt plate are flat and undecorated.

The Staffordshire Hoard

This mysterious piece, almost four inches long, uses the same principle as the brake lights of modern cars: The wafflelike texture of the gold under each garnet increases the gem's reflectivity.

Photograph by Robert Clark

All artifacts owned by: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery; Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent



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The Staffordshire Hoard: Gold Buttons and Pendant

Photograph by Robert Clark

All artifacts owned by: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery; Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent

Buttons of gold and garnets probably attached a scabbard to a belt. Precious materials and exquisite craftsmanship may offer a clue to the treasure's significance. "We suspect it's royal loot," says Kevin Leahy. "Who else would have collected such things?"

A pyramid-shaped pendant decorated with garnets is encrusted with dirt. Conservators gently clean such pieces with pyracantha thorns so as not to scratch the gold.


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The Staffordshire Hoard: Gold Sword-hilt Mount and Pummel

Gold Sword-hilt Mount

Gold Sword Pummel

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The Staffordshire Hoard: Handy Weapon

Jeweled Pummel Cap Rings

A jeweled pommel cap and rings brightened a hilt of bone or ivory (artist's rendition below) on a short, light sword known as a seax (SAY-aks). Generally wielded with one hand, the single-edged seax was more versatile than a full sword, serving as a hunting knife as well as a dagger. A blade of finely patterned iron and steel would have been a valued part of such a weapon, but none was included in the treasure.

Art by Daniel Dociu; Artifact re-creations source: Kevin Leahy, Portable Antiquities Scheme

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The Staffordshire Hoard: Zoomorphic mount

 

The zoomorphic mount is designed in the form of two style II eagles, facing each other and holding a fish vertically between them.

The Staffordshire Hoard plaque was quite badly damaged when it was removed. One bird was dramatically twisted away, but you can still see traces of its talons on the body of the fish.

The exact use for the zoomorphic mount is not yet known, however it is likely that it was used as decoration on a shield.

This gold plaque shows two eagles holding a fish between them. There was a plaque with one very similar eagle on the front of the shield found in the Sutton Hoo ship burial, which is thought to be where King Raedwald of East Anglia was buried.



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The Staffordshire Hoard: Pectoral cross

A pectoral cross or pectorale (from the Latin pectoralis: 'of the chest') is a cross, usually relatively large, suspended from the neck by a cord or chain that reaches well down the chest.

It would have been worn by senior clergy (bishops and abbots) as a sign of their office, or by wealthy Christian lay people.

Pendant cross with expanded arms and central flat top cabochon stone, the stone is red and presumed garnet.

The top arm is detached, torn rather than a deliberate cut. The decoration goes from the front over the loop and finishes on the back.

This damaged area shows that the arms may have been added to the central area and soldered in position.

The main cross has three other arms with a circular filigree pattern with twisted wire work edging. The left arm has been bent upwards and inwards.

The central garnet is set in the gold, which has decorative twisted wire


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The Staffordshire Hoard

Some pieces of the treasure were twisted or broken as if they had been forced into a small space.

 All artifacts owned by: Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery; Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent; Photographs by Robert Clark


Reposted from National Geographic 

The Staffordshire Hoard: Holy Relic

Inlaid with garnets, and perhaps glass, a gold cross seems to have been crumpled before being buried with the rest of the treasure.

Art by Daniel Dociu; Artifact re-creations source: Kevin Leahy, Portable Antiquities Scheme

 
This illustration depicts the cross as new, ready to adorn an altar or be carried into battle.


Reposted from National Geographic

 

Saxon Hoard - Saxon Hoard A Golden Discovery

Marion Blockley, an archaeologist, wonders if there is a clue in a lament written in around the 9th Century that describes a 7th Century battle and raid in the Midlands.

Did warriors ransack a settlement and leave with captured treasure?
"It's possible as they fled that they may have taken the hoard with them and buried it, hoping to come back but sadly they were killed," Ms Blockley said.
"I'm not saying it's true, but you know, it may well be."
'Significant items'

The Staffordshire Hoard is made up of thousands of items, including pieces of weaponry and dozens of ornate sword pommels, so could they have been part of a king's collection that had somehow fallen into the wrong hands?

Ms Blockley said nearby Tamworth had been a royal treasury.
She said kings used to receive gifts of "significant items of weaponry" which they would then redistribute to their favourite warriors.

Some say a key part of solving the mystery of the hoard could lie in where it was found near what was an important route between the Midlands and London, Watling Street.

Anglo-Saxon Hoard: Gold from England’s Dark Ages

On July 5th 2009, Terry Herbert, a metal detector enthusiast, discovered this large collection of Anglo-Saxon gold on farmland near Lichfield in Staffordshire, England.

Gold hilt fitting with intricate garnet decoration

Sword fitting with garnet

The Staffordshire Hoard, Gold Pommel Caps

The Staffordshire Hoard consists of more than 3,500 pieces dating back to about 650 A.D. This fantastically shiny hoard is valued at close to $5 million and represents the biggest collection of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever discovered. Among the more than 100 items on display at the museum you’ll find mostly military items with a few standouts like gold and garnet sword fittings and a gold strip bearing a Latin inscription from the Bible.

Pommel Cap

 

Rare-sword-pommel

The Staffordshire Hoard

The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork yet found. Discovered in a field near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, England, on 5 July 2009, it consists of over 3,500 items that are nearly all martial in character and contains no objects specific to female uses. The artefacts have tentatively been dated to the 7th or 8th centuries, placing the origin of the items in the time of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.

A selection of highlight pieces from the Staffordshire Hoard (top) and a gold sword hilt fitting with cloisonné garnet inlay (below), uncleaned by conservators, still showing traces of soil

The hoard has been described by Leslie Webster, former keeper of the department of prehistory at the British Museum, as "absolutely the metalwork equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells." She stated further that "this is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries." Dr Roger Bland, Head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, said, "It is a fantastically important discovery. It is assumed that the items were buried by their owners at a time of danger with the intention of later coming back and recovering them."[

Experts have produced a range of theories as to where the hoard came from and how it came to be deposited, and whether the objects were made for Christians or pagans. The average quality of the workmanship is extremely high and especially remarkable in view of the large number of individual objects, such as swords or helmets, from which the elements in the hoard came.

The hoard was valued at £3.285 million and has now been purchased by the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.