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Sutton Hoo - Masterpieces of the British Museum - BBC Documentary
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bloomsbury in central London is home to
one of the country's most famous
national institutions established in
1753 the British Museum is one of the
oldest museums in the world inside these
walls there are more than seven million
objects spanning over two million years
of global history and culture at the top
of these stairs is some of the greatest
treasure ever found on English soil more
than a thousand years old
some call it page one of British history
it is the Sutton Hoo treasure with this
helmet at centre it is the prime example
of a superb helmet it's something that
is completely extraordinary in
it's also at once familiar because it is
a face and we can see it's a helmet and
yet very strange very other there's a
world of dragons and monsters and the
face is just behind it in the darkness
of the cheek pieces
that the helmet was ever discovered at
all was down to the efforts of one woman
mrs. Edith pretty the daughter of a
wealthy industrialist she had lived at
Sutton Hoo in Suffolk with her husband a
retired colonel since 1926 twelve years
later she was widowed with a young son
[Music]
mrs. pretty was interested in
spiritualism like a lot of people were
in the 1930s we know that she had a
friend who was a medium and she used to
go to meetings in Woodbridge with
spiritualists and there is a story that
either her or a friend of hers had
visions of soldiers with spears walking
around on the mounds which she could see
from her first-floor window whatever the
truth of these rumors these earthen
mounds were certainly intriguing I think
mrs. pretty was just curious about what
was in you know in the mounds on her
estate she'd been to Egypt and also they
were there always are rumors of gold in
the mountains but she didn't know a bit
about archaeology and I think really her
curiosity was tickled and she was
wealthy enough to be able to open them
and just have a look mrs. pretty
contacted Apes which Museum and they in
turn suggested an archeologist named
basil Brown he literally rode up at her
door one day and presented himself and
Basil Brown had a real passion for
investigating monuments assisted by mrs.
pretties gardener and gamekeeper Brown
carried out the delicate task of
excavating the site just a few weeks of
painstaking work on mound one revealed
the impression of a ship which had long
since rotted away somebody else less
skillful group charged straight through
that but battles very clever excavation
did act to reveal the impression of the
boat left in the sand the sort of shadow
boat the boat simply got bigger and
bigger and bigger this is as big as the
Scandinavian ships you know so he was
very aware I think during the excavation
of the ship that he was into something
very very special whispers about the
discovery began to get out and soon the
authorities were involved Charles
Phillips a Cambridge academic visited
the site and was dumbstruck by what he saw
saw
the burial chamber was yet to be opened
and was clearly unrolled Phillips felt
it was not appropriate work for one man
a garden and a chauffeur he took over
the excavation which was to become the
richest archaeological find in British history
history
it must have been absolutely
overwhelming for the excavating team at
that stage I don't think they'd
anticipated how could they have done
anything quite like this because nothing
quite like this had ever been found in
Britain before there are other rich
Grey's but this was really quite
spectacular and I think they were in a
sense almost shell-shocked by the
rapidity and the extraordinary variety
and wealth of the material that was
coming out of this this burial chamber [Music]
[Music]
it came like a bolt out of the blue
suddenly here's a window on a world you
know this barbaric splendid burial
overflowing with extraordinary treasures
weapons golden garnet jewelry and of
course containers quite a lot of
containers imported silver drinking
horns drinking vessels everything I mean
shoes buckles if you could put together
a kind of life for an anglo-saxon King
there's not much there that you would
actually want to add to it by July 1939
it was obvious that this was a sight of
utmost importance but the growing
specter of the coming war meant the
excavation team was under immense
pressure to work quickly the whole time
they were working they were very aware
that Walker breakout the next day and so
it was you could almost look at it as a
as a form of a rescue excavation in a
sense so that it was quite amazing what
I'm sure part of the special nature of
that sense of urgency was the growing
realization as they excavated this
extraordinary assembly so that it was
here in some sense an emblem of English
kingship there was a very resonant
symbolic thing for the time in which it
was excavated absolutely on the 28th of
July in 1939 the team made perhaps the
most momentous discovery of all the
rusted pieces of an iron helmet I'm
standing right above the spot where the
helmet was found it was smashed into
tiny fragments and that tells us that
the helmet itself must have been rusted
and corroded at the time that the burial
chamber collapsed which means that the
burial chamber must have been a very
massive and sturdy structure it had to
support the weight of the mound on top
of it and survive long enough for the
helmet to rust away and then of course
it all collapsed and the helmet was
broken into tiny pieces these pieces
have been painstakingly put back
together to form this terrifying helmet
although it is made of iron it was once
covered in tinned bronze panels this
replica helmet shows how it would have
glittered in battle it was highly
decorated with scenes of a horseman
riding over a fallen soldier
and these dancing warriors with our
Spears and semicircular headdresses the
face mask has human features a cast
bronze mouth nose and eyebrows look
closer still and you will see that each
eyebrow ends in a Boar's Head with
pointed tusks and at each end of the
crest there is a dragon head with sharp
little teeth the degree of detail in
that facemask the garnets that pick out
the eyebrows the little sort of
toothbrush moustache over the mouths I
mean all this stuff is quite
extraordinary it's it's almost as though
they are trying to present a portrait of
the man who is behind it and of course
it is extraordinary that when you
actually wear the helmet or why the
replica it also actually enhances your
voice it actually makes the voice echo
and drop in tones so that that too would
actually give the wearer some extra sort
of persona if you like they're quite
sinister these helmets the big question
was who would have worn it the
particular conditions of mound one meant
that there was nothing left of the
person who was laid to rest there you
have to imagine the ship buried in the
ground it's like a container for water
so water percolating down through the
mound would collect in the burial
chamber in the boat and it would be
quite acidic because it's filtered
through this sandy soil and you have to
imagine a body basically lying in what
is in effect an acid bath and so the
body and all the bones dissolved away
over many years leaving only a few
chemical traces behind so that's why no
body or bone was discovered
there may not have been a body but the
artifacts gave some strong clues as to
whose grave this might have been in this
letter to mrs. pretty Thomas Kendrick
from the British Museum suggests it was
someone very special indeed there is no
doubt that the man in your Barrow must
have been a very important person and we
are beginning to wonder if he was king
raedwald of East Anglia King red world
had ruled in the early 7th century
if Kendrick was right then it meant that
the ship barrier had taken place nearly
1,400 years ago well if you look at all
the assemblage together and if you look
at the contenders for the burial you can
make a personal choice I mean you can
never say that this is the burial of X
but given the golden garnet jewelry of
the assemblage given the date of the
coins and given the possibility that the
burial could have taken place within a
decade of the those coins coming
together say in the mid 620 s then you
could argue for red world almost all we
know about King red world comes from
this 8th century manuscript the
ecclesiastical history of the English
people written by the anglo-saxon monk
known as the venerable bead red world
has a particular place in English
history because according to bead a
number of these early English kings held
a special sway over the southern English
peoples they were Kings who ruled other
kings and beed says they held an
Imperium the Latin word meaning a kind
of Empire what wide rule in anglo-saxon
this appears is Bret Walder or Britain welder
welder
the lavishness of the grave and even
conceivably some of the symbolism of the
artifacts could suggest that it's him
that dating is spot-on some of the
things in the grave were incredibly
valuable but they also had a
significance over and above their
material worth this great gold belt
buckle weighs just over 400 grams of
gold which new research shows was the
equivalent of 300 anglo-saxon shillings
now what's even more significant about
that is the fact that 300 shillings we
know from the law codes of the time is
the life price of a nobleman it was the
amount that had to be paid in
compensation to settle the feud if a
nobleman was slain what this meant was
that the man who was able to wear this
great gold buckle would have been able
to sit in a hall surrounded by noblemen
but with the price of the life of any
single one of those simply sitting on
his belt the goods within this grave
were certainly fit for a king nothing
like a crown was worn by those early
kings the first example of what we would
call a crown with kind of prongs comes
from the 10th century then it was the
sword and the helmet which defined the monarchy
this is an enormous amount of wealth
that's going into the ground absolutely
superb material there is nothing
anywhere else in this period to touch
the quality of that jewelry and yet this
is something that this family the royal
family in East Anglia could afford to
discard into the ground of course it was
an act of honor and homage to the dead
man but it also says you know we are so
rich we still have more of this behind
even treasured heirlooms were placed in
the chamber the animal interlaced
patterns on the helmet suggest it was
about a hundred years old when it was
buried what's more there was an
intriguing feature to its back
the helmet has repair on it so that
suggests that it had a bit of use before
it is impossible to know finally if this
helmet was worn in battle but although
it is quite delicate with its silver
work and garnet inlay there is no doubt
that this was a functional piece of
armor it would be possible to wear it as
it's got nostrils so that you can
breathe when you're wearing it it's
quite stifling actually to put the
replica on but it would be possible and
of course you then have to wonder did
your King go into battle there's no
reason why it shouldn't have been worn
and it would have made an amazing figurehead
figurehead
we know that king red world fought at
least once in the Battle of the river
idol in his 8th century manuscript B
tells us that red world masked his
troops in marched the 256 miles to
Northumbria to face his enemy Ethel
Firth in the year 616 although red will
defeated his enemy in the north he lost
his son Regan here in the battle because
warfare was an aristocratic occupation
of course the casualties were very heavy
in the aristocracy if he lost red well
himself conceivably may have died in
battle we just don't know at first sight
the grave seemed to have strong
Scandinavian links ship burials like
this have only been found in Suffolk and
Sweden the helmet looked Swedish too
like this one the Vandal 14 helmet from
Upland with its ear flaps and eyebrows
but a closer look at the Sutton Hoo
helmet showed some important differences
Sutton Hoo helmet has been raced from a
piece of iron just hammered up the
Kappas in one whole piece whereas the
construction of the Swedish helmets show
that they were made from several
different bands of iron and therefore we
now think it's possible that the hand
was actually made in England an English
helmet may be but one crowded with
images taken from Scandinavian mythology
like these dancing warrior panels each
warrior is dragging a foot and holds
Spears and a short sword they seem to be
doing some kind of ritual movement of
course they could be fighting but we
do have parallels for that in
Scandinavia so this is obviously a motif
I think what we're looking at here is a
repertoire of images and clearly they're
very potent images of power you have
warriors on a helmet and clearly
successful warriors and they must be to
do with the mythology and traditions and
the conferring of power and success in
battle there was one other group of
mighty warriors who influenced this
helmet the Romans had left Britain at
the beginning of the fifth century but
their influence was still being felt a
century or two later this fallen warrior
design weather man on horseback is
riding over the conquered enemy has its
roots in the Roman period and the helmet
shape itself borrows heavily from Roman
parade helmets these early anglo-saxon
kingdoms are really interesting because
as far as we can tell they were just
successful warriors who established
their dynasties in Britain having
migrated from Scandinavia in the late
Roman period of course later on when
they became powerful these Kings liked
offer in murcia who built the great dike
between England Wales all of these
people in East Anglia they like to claim
that they had a great descent going back
even to Kings before the dynasty goes
back to Caesar and then ultimately to
Woden having a Germanic God as the
progenitor of your dynasty is not
uncommon actually amongst the early
anglo-saxon dynasties but it's very
interesting that the East Anglian
genealogy also includes Caesar in it and
that to me is really rather interesting
because one of the strands in this
extraordinary burial is a strand which
seems to be saying we are the heirs of
Rome the helmet itself is based on a
Roman parade helmet very clearly so that
in itself is a sort of evocation of the
Roman past so the fact that Caesar
appears in the genealogy I think it's no
they come from the pagan world of Odin
and Thor rodent and flower thee these
pagan gods of war and storm in the
Viking northern world that we're
familiar with later you know but they
also adopt Roman ideas of rulership of
kingship perhaps some of the symbolism
of their kingship and subsequently of
course Roman religion and Latin culture
the late Roman inheritance included
Christianity bead tells us that a
missionary landed on the island of
Thanet in Kent in 597 he talks about
King red walls who spent quite a bit of
time in Kent and were there for coming
to contact with Christianity there
having adopted Christianity but on
returning to his kingdom had reverted to
paganism or at least had gone halfway
back to being a pagan because he had
alters according to be placed side by
side one to Christ and one to the devil
which presumably meant the Germanic God
Woden so so red world seems to be
backing two horses at that time it's
possible that the family of the dead man
also decided to back to horses when they
came to assemble the grave goods
although it was a pagan burial with
provision made for the pagan afterlife -
silver baptismal spoons with the Greek
inscription solos and polos were also
included baptismal spoons of course are
are given at conversion and baptism you
know and these had that it seemed a
solace and poor lost soul and poor you
know the famous conversion of the
Apostle Paul in the New Testament and
even though he converted back to
paganism and was buried in a pagan
graveyard his family nevertheless buried
these things with him the spoons with
their Greek inscriptions were found at
the right shoulder of where the body
might have lain the pagan helmet was at
the left shoulder the helmet does not
contain any Christian symbolism in
contrast this eighth century helmet
found in York carries an emphatic
Christian message its crest forms a
cross shape
and there is a Latin inscription in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ the Holy
Spirit and God too always say our men
that Christian inscription on the York
helmet is perhaps doing what these
extraordinary totemic images with the
logical images whatever they are are
doing all of a sudden who helmet the
Christian invocation the Christian
prayer on the Oak Hill which is bringing
protection to its wearer and so I think
perhaps these fascinating animal images
on the crest and on the face mask of the
sudden who helmet might be doing for the
wear of the sudden new helmet the
discovery of the Sutton Hoo treasure
turned anglo-saxon scholarship on its
head bringing with it a new
understanding of how sophisticated their
culture was just by looking at this
grave assemblage we realized that there
were international connections that
Goods and probably also people could
travel very long distances and very far
beyond their own cultures if you look at
the eyebrows the garnets used on those
may have come from as far away as India
or Sri Lanka so you see that the
materials themselves had travelled quite
a long distance before reaching
anglo-saxon England what's more it
seemed to prove something that few
people dare to believe was possible it
gave a reality to that great masterpiece
of early English literature the epic
poem Beowulf which described the great
deeds and death of a heroic king from
the seventh century there's a great
description in in Beowulf of the helmet
sarita helm that the white shining hell
may be silvered or whatever made by the
mastery of a gold master who worked
wonders so long ago you know this is
this is the world of burl wolf
in the poem it's referred to the fact
that the helmet has got what is called a
wallah it is something that is we
remember Windham wound with wire and it
somehow goes around the helmet where we
didn't have any idea what that was until
he was realized that this would fit
exactly as a description the crest that
we have on the Sun new helmet the
discovery of the treasure in July 1939
made headline news interest in is only
intensified when a treasure trove
inquiry decided that everything from the
grave belonged to mrs. pretty who had
funded the excavation and on whose land
it had been found in an act of
unparalleled generosity she promptly
gave all this extraordinary treasure to
the British Museum she was offered the
honor of dame of the british empire but
refused it within a fortnight of the
treasure trove inquest war had broken
out amazingly seems like this were
played out on the burial mound once war
was declared this area of which is
called sutton Heath's was used for
battle practice and the tanks and Bren
gun carriers drove all over these mounds
during the time when it was used for
battle practices actually tanks drove
right through the ship so when it was
reactivated you could actually see where
the tanks tracks had driven over the
remains of the ship London 2 was under
attack and the British Museum moved many
of its treasures to a London Underground
station the helmet still in over 500
pieces was boxed up and stored here at
the end of the war the huge job began of
piecing it back together which took two
years this was the outcome which was
proudly displayed in the festival of
Britain in 1951 [Music]
professor Laura Britain was absolutely
an act of regeneration after the war and
it was there to say look here we are
we're back in business this is what we
stand for these are British values this
is our British history this is our past
and it's something which we should be
very proud of there in ration book
Britain rather pinched this artefact was
displayed and an artifact which in the
conventional narrative of English
history and even British history
represented a kind of beginning you know
that the story of the monarchy leading
into the story of the empire all went
back to this despite all the attention
the helmet was getting there was a
growing sense of our knees about the way
it had been put back together it didn't
actually function as a helmet and the
sides of the face and the throat would
have been left completely unprotected
more than that because the crest and the
terminal dragon overlapped the neck
guard the neck guard wasn't flexible
which would have meant that when you
wore it you were like almost imprisoned
in it all these things gradually led to
the helmet being dismantled and then
being put together again which was like
opening a little box of horrors in 1971
the reassembling started and british
museum conservator Nigel Williams was
given the job for over six months the
helmet lay in over 500 fragments on
Williams work table a colleague
remembers the blood sweat and
frustrations involved he was an
optimistic man he probably thought Oh
three weeks I'll have something to show
it was really quite wrong it took him a
very long time and what slowed him up of
course was everything was such an
important how much pretty well
everything had to be discussed this does
slow you down you can't just go at it
although I do remember now that you're
seeing time
people get out of my room and let me get
on with it then an astounding
breakthrough is made in a box marked
head he founds the jaw of a dragon head
similar to those at either end of the
crest it hadn't been used on the
original reconstruction that little head
lay around for a while
item I think he'd be looking at it for
about eight months so you gradually you
begin to absorb so subconsciously the
shapes of things and it's when your eye
catches one and looks at another
suddenly you see outfit there I mean you
almost know you picked it up with your
goal you burn really don't need to try it
it
yeah I'll fit there yes all right yes
this third dragon head is a perfect fit
between the eyebrows interlocking with
the other elements of the face it also
revealed another layer of symbolism in
the helmet suddenly the features of the
face mask materialized into the shape of
a winged dragon the eyebrows appear as
wings while the nose and moustache
formed the body and the tail this is
once a human face and yet a face which
has animals strengths embodied in the
symbolism of this mask and which is also
not only something which embodies the
power of the wearer but perhaps also
terrifies the seer
I think the helmet has become an icon
that helmet has a sort of reality for
people because they can look at it and
see the early 7th century see those
early anglo-saxon warriors and how they
perceived themselves nearly 1500 years
after it was made the Sutton Hoo helmet
has taken its place in the British
Museum as one of its supreme treasures
discovered on the eve of war it became a
symbol of the nation and proof of a
forgotten sophisticated civilization
it's an object in the museum's
collections like no other we may never
know who made it and we can't be certain
who wore it
but it still has the power to make us
[Laughter] [Music]
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