Abstract
ALL anxiety, which has been not inconsiderable, as to the future of the antiquities from the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon royal ship-burial has been allayed by the announcement made by the Trustees of the British Museum (Bloomsbury) that Mrs. E. M. Pretty, declared their owner by the verdict of the Coroner's inquest of August 14 (see NATURE of August 19, p. 318), has generously presented them to the Museum. The gift is subject to a condition that they shall be exhibited in due course on loan for a period in the Borough Museum of Ipswich. The gift comprises articles in gold, gems, and enamel, silver, bronze, iron, stone, wood, leather and textile fabrics—everything, in fact, which was found in the ship-burial on her estate at Sutton Hoo. Thus the relics from a find, which archæologically is the most important of its kind made in Great Britain, and the most valuable of its period made anywhere, not only become the property of the nation, but also will be preserved together as a whole. Had the collection been dispersed, as was feared possible, the discovery would have lost much of its unique value for cultural studies, and as tangible evidence for the whole complex of religious and social concepts, which inspired our Anglo-Saxon forbears in the seventh century of our era in their reactions to the demise of a chiefly head and representative of the community. Intrinsically valuable objects and jewels in gold, silver, and enamel, especially when found in such rich profusion, impress the popular imagination: they afford evidence of a highly developed æsthetic faculty and superb skill in technique; but it is the humbler objects with which they are associated, the personal and domestic articles of the less precious metals, the pottery, the wood, leather, stone and the textiles, which are the more eloquent for the student of the culture of the time. They are the raw material from which the archæologist interprets advance in civilization and the cultural history of the people as a whole.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gift of Sutton Hoo Antiquities to the Nation. Nature 144, 410–411 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144410c0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144410c0