The purse, with ornamental lid covering a lost leather pouch, hung from the waist-belt.[90] The lid consists of a kidney-shaped cellwork frame enclosing a sheet of horn, on which were mounted pairs of exquisite garnet cellwork plaques depicting predatory birds, wolves devouring men, geometric motifs, and a double panel showing horses or animals with interlaced extremities. The maker derived these images from the ornament of the Swedish-style helmets and shield-mounts. In his work they are transferred into the cellwork medium with dazzling technical and artistic virtuosity.
Purse lid. British Museum.
These are therefore the work of a master-goldsmith of his age who had access to an East Anglian armoury containing the objects used as pattern sources. As an ensemble they enabled the patron to appear in an imperial persona, and expressed his authority and resources to do so.[91]
Within the purse were contained 37 gold shillings or tremisses, each from a different Frankish mint and therefore deliberately formed as a collection. There were also three blank coins and two small ingots.[92] This has prompted various explanations. Possibly like the Roman obolus they were to pay the forty ghostly oarsmen in the afterworld, or were a funeral tribute, or an expression of allegiance.[93] They provide the (debated) primary evidence for the date of the burial, probably in the third decade of the 7th century.[94]
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The Drinking-horn complex (lower body area) In the area corresponding to the lower legs of the body were laid out various drinking vessels. They included a pair of drinking horns of heroic distinction, made from the horns of an aurochs (a continental species of Wild Ox extinct since early mediaeval times).[95] These have matching die-stamped gilt rim mounts and vandykes, of similar workmanship and design to the shield mounts, and exactly similar to the surviving horn vandykes from Mound 2.[96] These mounts also have decisive parallels in metalwork from the Vendel cemetery.[97] In the same area stood a set of maplewood cups with similar rim-mounts and vandykes,[98] and a heap of folded textiles lay on the left side.
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The 'Heaps' (beyond the feet, east end) A large quantity of material including metal objects and textiles was formed into two folded or packed heaps on the foot (east) end of the central wooden structure. This included a long hauberk or coat of ring-mail (an extremely rare survival) made of alternate rows of welded and riveted iron links.[99] There were also two additional hanging bowls,[100] leather shoes,[101] a cushion or pillow stuffed with feathers, folded objects of leather, a wooden platter, and other items. At one side of the heaps lay an iron hammer-axe with a long iron handle, possibly a weapon.[102]
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The Silverware and Contents (above the heaps) On top of the folded heaps was set a fluted silver dish with drop handles, probably of Italian make, with the relief image of a female head in late Roman style worked into the bowl.[103] This contained a series of small burr-wood cups with rim-mounts, combs of antler, small metal knives, a small silver bowl, and various other small effects (possibly toilet equipment), and including a bone gaming-piece, thought to be the 'king piece' from a set.[104] (Traces of bone above the head position have suggested that a gaming-board was possibly set out, as at Taplow.) Above these was a silver ladle with gilt chevron ornament, also of Mediterranean origin.[105]
Over the whole of this, perched on top of the heaps (or their container, if there was one) lay a very large round silver platter with chased ornament, made in the Eastern Empire in around 500 AD and bearing the control stamps of Emperor Anastasius I (491–518).[106] On this plate was deposited a piece of unburnt bone of uncertain derivation.[107]
The assemblage of Mediterranean silverware in the Sutton Hoo grave is unique for this period in Britain and Europe.[108]
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Textiles (around and on the central structure) The burial chamber was evidently rich in textiles, represented by many fragments preserved, or replaced by metal corrosion products.[109] They included quantities of twill (possibly from cloaks, blankets or hangings), and the remains of cloaks with characteristic long-pile weaving. There appear to have been more exotic coloured hangings or spreads, including some (possibly imported) woven in stepped lozenge patterns using a Syrian technique in which the weft is looped around the warp to create a textured surface. Two other colour-patterned textiles, near the head and foot of the body area, resemble Scandinavian work of the same period.
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The Mound Finally the burial was completed by the construction of a long and high oval mound which not only completely covered the ship but rose above the horizon at the west or riverward side of the Sutton Hoo cemetery.[110] Although the view to the river is now obscured by Top Hat Wood, it was doubtless originally intended that the mound should brood visibly on the bluff above the river as an outward symbol of power to those using the waterway. On present evidence, this magnificent funeral appears to have been the final occasion upon which the Sutton Hoo cemetery was used for its original purpose.
Long after the mound was raised the westerly end of it was dug away when a mediaeval boundary ditch was laid out. Therefore when looters dug into the apparent centre during the sixteenth century they missed the real centre: nor could they have foreseen that the deposit lay very deep in the belly of a buried ship, well below the level of the land surface.[111] Great pains had been taken to ensure that it remained undisturbed for a very long time.
