Franks Casket (c. 700): Anglo-Saxon Whalebone Box with Runes

The Franks Casket is a small box of carved whalebone made in Anglo-Saxon England, probably in Northumbria, in the early 8th century. Its panels set Germanic legend beside Roman history and Christian scripture, and its inscriptions in runes and Latin make it one of the most important objects for understanding early English language and thought. It is now in the British Museum in London.

What the casket is

The box measures about 23 centimetres long, 19 centimetres wide and 11 centimetres high. It was made from whalebone panels fitted together and originally held by metal mounts, which are now lost. Every surface is covered with carved scenes framed by inscriptions.

Most of the texts are written in the Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet, called the futhorc, in Old English. Some are in Latin, and one Latin passage is partly written in Roman letters. A few inscriptions use deliberately scrambled or coded runes, which suggests that the maker enjoyed puzzles and expected a learned audience.

The carved scenes

The front panel combines two stories that seem to have nothing in common. On the left is Weland the Smith, the lame craftsman of Germanic legend, at his forge taking revenge on the king who had imprisoned him. On the right the three Magi bring gifts to the infant Christ, labelled with the word “mægi”. Around the edge runs a short alliterative poem about the whale whose bone the box is made from.

The left side shows Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, being suckled by the she-wolf in a forest. The back shows the Roman general, later emperor, Titus capturing Jerusalem in AD 70, with people fleeing and Latin and runic labels. The lid shows an archer, named in runes as Ægili, defending a house against attackers; he is usually identified with Egil, the brother of Weland in Norse tradition.

The right side is the hardest to read. It shows a horse, a seated creature and other figures, with an inscription in partly coded runes. Scholars have linked it to various Germanic legends, but there is no agreed interpretation.

Language and runes

The whale poem on the front is among the earliest surviving pieces of Old English verse. It uses alliteration, the repeated initial sounds typical of later poems such as Beowulf, and says in effect that the sea cast the fish up on to a rocky shore, where the great beast grieved as it ran aground, ending with the words “whale’s bone”. It works as both a riddle and a label for the material.

The spelling and the forms of the runes point to the Northumbrian dialect of the early 8th century. That makes the casket valuable to linguists as well as art historians. It also shows that runes, often associated with pagan Scandinavia, were still used in Christian England for display, play and learning alongside the Latin alphabet.

Meaning and purpose

Historians do not know who owned the casket or what it held. Suggestions include a book, relics or treasure, and it may have been made for a royal or monastic patron. Its designer clearly knew Roman history, the Bible and native heroic stories, a mix found in Northumbrian monasteries of the age of Bede.

Many scholars see a deliberate programme in the pairings. Themes of exile, suffering, revenge, kingship and salvation recur, and the pagan stories may have been chosen to set off the Christian ones rather than to oppose them. Others are more cautious and stress how much remains uncertain.

Discovery and the museum

The casket resurfaced in the 19th century at Auzon in the Haute-Loire region of central France, where a family reportedly used it as a sewing box. By then it had come apart and lost its silver fittings. The panels reached a dealer in Paris, and Augustus Wollaston Franks, later Keeper at the British Museum, bought them and presented them to the museum in 1867.

The right side had been separated and followed a different path. It entered the Carrand collection and passed with it to the Museo del Bargello in Florence. The London casket is shown with a cast of this panel. How the box reached France is unknown; it may have travelled with a cleric or pilgrim in the Middle Ages.

Timeline

• c. 700-750: The casket is made, probably in Northumbria.
• Middle Ages: It reaches France by an unknown route.
• 19th century: It is recorded at Auzon, Haute-Loire, already broken apart.
• 1850s: Augustus Wollaston Franks acquires most of the panels in Paris.
• 1867: Franks gives the casket to the British Museum.
• Late 19th century: The right panel enters the Bargello in Florence with the Carrand collection.

Why it matters

The Franks Casket is among the earliest substantial sources for Old English verse and runic writing, and it shows how an early Christian English culture absorbed Roman, biblical and Germanic stories at once. It belongs alongside the Sutton Hoo ship burial, the Staffordshire Hoard and the Codex Amiatinus as a key witness to Anglo-Saxon art.