Royal Saxon Tomb in Prittlewell - The Tomb and Artefacts

The Tomb and Artefacts

Excavation demonstrated the tomb to be a deep, formerly walled room full of objects of copper, gold, silver and iron. These finds included an Anglo-Saxon hanging bowl, decorated with inlaid escutcheons and a cruciform arrangement of applied strips, a folding stool, three stave-built tubs or buckets with iron bands, a sword and a lyre, the last one of the most complete found in Britain. The tomb itself is 4 metres (13 ft) square, the largest chambered tomb ever discovered in England. The chamber had gradually collapsed and filled with soil as its containing wooden supports decayed.

About 110 objects were lifted by conservators in two phases, over a period of ten days. The final lift was completed on 20 December 2003, with final defining of the chamber walls and backfilling continuing for three days after.

The inventory of grave goods is comparable to one found in a burial at Taplow in 1883, and though the overall collection is less sumptuous than that from the ship-burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, many individual objects are closely comparable and of similar quality. For example, there is a hollow gold belt buckle, but much plainer than that from Sutton Hoo, but the lyres, drinking vessels, and copper-alloy shoe buckles are very similar. As at Sutton Hoo, the best hope for closely dating the burial is the Merovingian gold coins, however the dating of these is a complicated matter, based on their metallic content rather than the design and information stamped on them. Research continues on this as on other aspects of the find, but the evidence initially suggests a date in the period 600-650, or 600-630. There is an object identified as a "standard", as at Sutton Hoo, but of a different type, and there is a folding stool of a type often seen in royal portraits in Early Medieval manuscripts that is a unique find in England, and was probably imported.

The acidic sandy soil had completely dissolved the body's bones, and any other bone in the tomb, but some pieces of human teeth were found, but too far affected by decay for DNA to be found in them. The body had been laid in a wooden coffin, with two small gold foil crosses, one over each eye. One opinion was that he had been laid in the coffin by Christians, and that the coffin had been then buried by pagans.

Some of the objects were block-lifted together with the soil that they were embedded in.

The design of the lyre was reconstructed from soil impressions and surviving metal pieces. There was evidence that it had been repaired at least once. A copy of it was made, in yew wood, and was played to accompany a funeral song sung for King Sǣberht in Anglo-Saxon and English in a church in Southend.