The Silver Spoons from Sutton Hoo

Extract

There were found in the great ship burial two silver spoons, ten inches long, of a type well-known about the 6th century A.D. They have inscribed on them in Greek the names SAUL and PAUL (FIG. I). Although several spoons of this character are known to students, their precise use remains obscure. Since they mostly bear the names of saints it is possible that they served some special liturgical purpose, but it is equally possible that they were strictly comparable to the christening mug of later ages (see discussion by Ernst Kitzinger in ANTIQUITY for March 1940). At Sutton Hoo the spoons were closely associated with a set of silver bowls bearing a cruciform decoration and were placed close to the right side of the position which should have been occupied by the head of the deceased. R. L. S. Bruce Mitford of the British Museum (Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, Vol. XXV, 1949), writes as follows:— ‘We may accept the spoons without hesitation as a present for a convert—not a Christening gift for an infant, but as a gift intended to mark the baptism of an adult convert relinquishing his pagan state, and no doubt a royal convert’.