Masterpieces of the British Museum

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 7 million objects

spanning of the 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 1 of British history

it is the Sutton Hoo treasure

with this helmet at its center

it is the prime example of a superb helmet

is something that is completely extraordinary

in anglo-saxon England

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

is the 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 retired colonel since 1926

twelve years later she was widowed with a young son

and had withdrawn from polite society

this is pretty was it interested in spiritualism

like a lot of people were in the nineteen thirties

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 earth mounds was certainly intriguing

I think this is pretty was just curious about

what was in you know in the man's on her estate

she'd been to Egypt and also never there always are rumors of gold in the

mountains but she did know a bit about archaeology and I think really her

curiosity was tickled and she was wealthy enough

to be able to open and just have a look

mrs. Pretty contacted ipswich museum and they in turn suggested an archaeologist

named hazel brown

he literally rolled up at her door one day and presented himself

and that's how it all began

as all brown had a real passion for investigating monuments

assisted by mrs. Prettiest garden and gamekeeper brown carried out the

delicate task of excavating the site just a few weeks of painstaking work on

mound one reveal the impression of a ship which had long since rotted away

somebody else less skilful blowjob straight through that but battles

very clever excavation did actually really impression of the boat left in

the sand 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

the burial chamber was yet to be opened and was clearly unrobbed

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

it must be 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 has ever been found in Britain

before there are other rich grades but this was really quite spectacular

and I think they were in a sense of my shell shocked by the community in the

extraordinary variety and wealth of material was coming out of these this

burial chamber

he came like a bolt out of the blue

suddenly he is a window on a world you know this barbaric splendid burial

overflowing with extraordinary treasures

weapons, golden? Jewelry and of course containers quite a lot of containers

imported silver drinking horns drinking vessels everything we choose

chuckles 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 site of but most importance

that the growing specter of the coming war meant the

excavation team was under immense pressure to work quickly

the whole time they were working with a very aware that walk break out the next day

and so it was you can almost look at it as a as a form of a rescue excavation sense

so that it was quite amazing what they achieved

I'm sure part of the special nature of that sense of urgency was the growing

realization is as they excavated this extraordinary assemblies

that it was here in some sense an emblem of English kingship

there was very resonant symbolic thing for the

time in which it was excavated absolutely

on the 28 of july 1939

the team made perhaps the most momentous discovery of all

the rusted pieces of an iron helmet

I'm standing right about 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 be a very massive and sturdy structure it had to support

the weight of the mound on top of it and survived long enough for the helmet to

rust away and then it calls it all collapse 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 intend 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 so dear

and these dancing warriors with their spears and semi circular 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 face mask

the guards that pick out the eyebrows

a little sort of truth for some stars over the mouth

I mean all this stuff is quite extraordinary

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 is 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 the 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

they 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 suggest 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 red world 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

what 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 garden jewelry

the assemblage given the date of the coins and given the possibility that the

barrel could have taken place within a decade of that those corn coming together

say in the mid 620 is 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 are the English kings held a special sway over the southern English people's

they were Kings who ruled other kings

and bead says they held an Imperium know that the latin word meaning a kind of empire

what wide rule in anglo-saxon disappears as Brett welder or Britain welder

the lavishness of the grave and even conceivably some of the symbolism of the artifacts

could suggest that it's him but 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 and low saxon shillings

and what's even more significant about that is the fact that three hundred

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 a few different

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 nobleman

but with the price of the life of any single one of those simply sitting on his belt

the goods within this grave was 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 what kind of prawns comes from the 10th century

then it was the sword and the helmet which define the monarchy

this is an enormous amount of wealth that's getting into the ground

absolutely superb material there is nothing anywhere else in this periode 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 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 interlace patterns on the helmet suggested

was about a hundred years old when it was buried

what's more there was an intriguing feature to its back

the helmet has a repair on it so that would suggest

that it had a bit of use before was put in the grave

it is impossible to know finally if this helmet was

worn in battle but although it is quite delicate

with its silver work and garnered 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 replicon

but it would be possible and of course he then

have to wonder did your king going to battle

there's no reason why it shouldn't have been

warned it would have made an amazing figurehead

we know that King red world for at least once in the battle of the river idol

in his eighth century manuscript be tells us that red world masked his troops

in March the 256 miles to Northumbria to face his enemy Ethel forth in the year

although red will defeat his enemy in the north

he lost his son Reagan here in the battle

because warfare was an aristocratic occupation of course the

casualties were very heavy in the aristocracy if you lost

Red while himself