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The Byzantine Silver Bowls in the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial and Tree-Worship in Anglo-Saxon England Michael D

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The Byzantine Silver Bowls in the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial and Tree-Worship in Anglo-Saxon England Michael D PIA Volume 21 (2011), 34-45 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/pia.378 The Byzantine Silver Bowls in the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial and Tree-Worship in Anglo-Saxon England Michael D. J. Bintley* The ten Byzantine silver bowls included amongst the grave goods interred in the chamber of the Mound 1 ship burial at Sutton Hoo remain one of the most puzzling features of this site. It has been suggested that these items, which lay separated from the rest of the silver in the burial and close to the head of the body-space (where no body was found), may have had some special meaning which has never been discovered. This paper will argue that one of the possible keys to unlocking their significance may be found in the central roundel that adorns the centre of each bowl in the form of a rosette. These bowls, which are thought to have been manufactured in the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire in c. 600, entered the British Isles in unknown circumstances before com- ing into the possession of the man buried in (or commemorated by) the Mound 1 burial. Through comparison with contemporary sculpture and vernacular litera- ture, I will suggest that this central rosette, which was associated with both the cross of Christ and sacred trees in Byzantine sculpture, may have served as a conventional bridge between Christian and pre-Christian religious tradi- tions associated with sacred trees in Anglo-Saxon England. The central rosettes adorning each of these bowls may have been understood as the flower of a sacred tree. Since the latter appears to have figured in Anglian paganism it is possible that the bowls may helped to convert the Anglian aristocracy, bridging a gap between Germanic insular religious traditions and those that were being introduced to Britain at the time that the ship burial itself took place. Burial Context proved to be a nest of eight inverted The ten silver bowls found beside the body- silver bowls, one inside the other, and space most commonly identified as the bur- all except the top two perfectly pre- ial or cenotaph of the East Anglian king Ræd- served. Two more bowls, similar to the wald (d. 624-5; see Bruce-Mitford 1974: 33), others, had slid off the top of the pile. appear somewhat obscurely at first in Rupert One of these had almost completely Bruce-Mitford’s popular British Museum disintegrated. Under the silver bowls, handbook to the Sutton Hoo ship burial: their handles projecting, were two silver spoons of Byzantine type…with Three feet out from the west wall a the names ‘Saulos’ and ‘Paulos’ (Saul dome-like lump, with purplish stains, and Paul) in Greek characters (Bruce- Mitford 1972a: 29). * UCL Department of English Language and Like the so-called baptismal spoons which Literature they were found overlapping, these bowls are The Byzantine Silver Bowls in the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial 35 of Eastern Mediterranean origin, and were suggested for this reason that they may have probably manufactured in the eastern prov- had some special significance (Bruce-Mit- inces of the Byzantine empire c. 600 (Harris ford 1972b: 125), which Angela Care Evans 2003: 125). In fact, as far as Bruce-Mitford thought to have been probably “more per- was concerned, all of the silver objects in the sonal” than that of the silver included in the burial seemed to have been crafted in either Anastasius dish complex at the other end of eastern Europe or the Near East, and perhaps the central deposit (Care Evans 1986: 59-60). all in “outlying provinces of the Byzantine On this point, arguing in favour of a coffin Empire” (Bruce-Mitford 1972a: 65). Each of within the burial chamber, Martin Carver these ten bowls, as he was later to describe went so far as to suggest that the bowls may them, is “circular, regularly dished and shal- originally have been perched on the lid of the low”, and might reasonably be described as casket itself (Carver 1998: 126). Although the a set, all being of the same general shape question of whether or not there may have and size and, more importantly, centred by been a coffin in the burial assemblage is an a “central roundel with some sort of nodal interesting point, it is less important in this device, and cross-arms radiating from this context than it is to note that these ten bowls to the rim” (Bruce-Mitford 1972b: 71, 111, were accorded the same apparent dignity by 116; see figure 1). Another feature that may those who organised the grave goods as the be of some significance is the instability of iconic helmet positioned to the left of the these bowls on their convex bases, with none body space. Additionally, it is perhaps signifi- being ideally suited to resting unsupported cant that whilst the helmet and the shield, of its own accord upon a flat surface, pos- the accoutrements of defence, were orien- sibly indicating that they were intended to tated to the left of the body space, the bowls be passed from hand to hand (Bruce-Mitford lay close to the ornately decorated sword and 1972b: 71; Care Evans 1986: 60). what is now catalogued as a spearhead, and may thus have been seen as more fittingly associated with the assertive and aggressive virtues of Anglo-Saxon warrior-kings. Transmission It is not known how these bowls came into the hands of the East Anglian aristocracy, nor indeed how they entered the British Isles; whether they arrived as diplomatic gifts or through trading seems likely to remain unknown (Harris 2003: 170). These options Fig. 1: Central rosette and equal-armed cross seem more likely, however, than the possibil- from one of the ten silver bowls (sim- ity that the bowls were taken as the spoils plified design). After Bruce-Mitford of war, arguably because of the apparent (1974), Plate 2. dignity afforded to them in the assemblage, but more convincingly because of their per- The deposition of the bowls has attracted ceived relationship with the two spoons uni- special attention because of their separa- formly described as being “of a well-known tion from the rest of the silver in the burial late-classical type”, beside which they were chamber, and positioning beside what is rea- placed (Bruce-Mitford 1972a: 68; Care Evans sonably assumed to be the right shoulder 1986: 60). These spoons, inscribed with the of the implied body space, whether or not names of Paul and Saul, or permutations a body was actually present. Bruce-Mitford thereof, and equally prominent in the grave 36 The Byzantine Silver Bowls in the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial given their proximity to the head of the for Christian sacrifice, and a small altar for body-space, have been taken to offer some offering victims to devils’, HE II.15).2 It is not potential insight into the way that the bowls necessarily overstating the potential Chris- arrived at Sutton Hoo (see discussion in Hog- tian significance of these spoons to interpret gett 2010: 108-09). Whilst Anthea Harris has them as having passed into the possession demonstrated that the passage of Byzantine of Mound 1’s occupant in a Christian con- goods into the British Isles was probably text, without overemphasizing the extent conducted along two major routes, arguing to which he would have been recognized (on the basis of the distribution of similar as a good Christian by the local bishop. The finds) that the silver bowls are most likely cohabitation of both pagan and Christian to have entered the south or east of England features within the burial assemblage is in through a route of “maritime commercial this respect wholly in accord with what we contact” which first passed through north- know about the way that East Anglian kings ern Italy before reaching northwards along approached their religious observances at the Rhine, she suggests that the prominence this time and is, perhaps significantly, espe- of the bowls in the assemblage indicates a cially in keeping with the character of Bede’s formal reception context; that they were Rædwald (Bruce-Mitford 1974: 33). It is plau- given and received rather than purchased sible, if not likely, that the positioning of or taken (Harris 2003: 143, 175). This was a the spoons in close proximity to the silver trade route of great importance, as Hodges bowls indicates that the two sets of items has noted, for ‘alliance making in the north’ were given and received at the same time. (Hodges 1982: 31-32). Whilst any attempt to judge what this recep- So far we have seen that the ten silver bowls tion context was can only be speculative, the may have been positioned beside the head of most immediate possibility that presents the body-space because they were regarded itself is that they may have been donated in by those who constructed the mound as hav- a Christian context, perhaps in exchange for ing been of personal significance to the man baptismal vows, and that they may thus have interred there, whether they were burying formed a part of an exchange of high-status his body, or his memory, and that they had goods in the early seventh century though been given to him rather than taken. Angela which the Church may have sought to secure Care Evans has argued that the significance and reinforce its foothold in south-eastern of the spoons as a possible symbol of Chris- England. tian baptism “should not be overstated”; in Whether they were directly supplied by other words not taken to indicate that their representatives of the Church itself whom owner had necessarily received Christianity Dorothy Whitelock presumed to have con- himself (Care Evans 1986: 63).
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