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Writer's pictureSarah Greenwood

Who was Saexa, the King of Bling?

It’s been a week for royal princes, first with the birth of baby Archie to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who is destined to spend much of his life in the public eye, and second with the attribution of the Anglo-Saxon burial in Essex, first found in 2003, to Saexa of Essex, a prince about whom we know very little.


Engraving of King Saeberht of Essex from the margin of a 16th century map by John Speed

So who was Saexa? All I know about him is that he has been dubbed 'The King of Bling' and 'Britain’s Tutankhamun' because of the riches buried with him. The problem, of course, is that the burial found in Prittlewell in Essex where he may have been buried dates from very long ago, right in the middle of what used to be called The Dark Ages. Archaeologists are dating it to between 575 and 605 AD. To put that in context, the Romans left in 410 AD and the first Saxon king of England didn’t emerge until Aethelstan 500 years later.


Saexa was not a king but the brother of a king. When the burial was first discovered, it was thought likely to belong to Saeberht of Essex but he didn’t die until around 616, so a bit too late for this grave. Saeberht was part of a dynasty of East Saxon kings newly established by his father Sledd, and his bones were reportedly dug up by Henry III in 1309 and reburied in a rather plain tomb in Westminster Abbey where they presumably still are. Sledd had two sons and the younger was probably called Saexa; this is the prince that is likely to be in this burial. Saexa’s brother King Saeberht was succeeded by his son Saexred who was killed in battle in 626. Saexred had a brother Saeward who was killed fighting alongside him, but according to the Venerable Bede, whose Ecclesiastical History of the English People was written more than 100 years later, there was a third brother, whose name we don’t know. He may have been Saexbald, who was father of a later Essex King, Swithhelm ,but It is also possible that Saexa and Saexbald are actually the same guy. Confused? Not surprising when all their names are so similar. We don’t know when Prince Saexa died but (if it’s really him at Prittlewell, of course) we do know that he was Christian. Only just Christian though. Like Sutton Hoo, Christian iconography in the burial is counterbalanced by all the trappings of a pagan burial with its firm belief in the need for significant numbers of possessions to take into the afterlife.


Gold foil crosses found in the Anglo-Saxon burial at Prittlewell in Essex.

This period at the turn of the 7th century is exactly when Christianity arrived in the South of England. The mission led by Augustine landed in Kent in 597 and Aethelbert, King of Kent was baptised shortly after. His sister Ricula married Saeberht of Essex so you can quickly see how these early Essex Kings became Christian. Saeberht created a bishopric for second Roman missionary, Mellitus, in his capital London in 604 so he’d definitely converted by then and it’s likely that other members of the family fell under the influence of this early Christian mission. So now we have Saexa at a Saxon court, influenced by his mother and uncle (some of England’s earliest Christian converts) and headed by his brother, Saeberht. Picture a Beowulf-style set-up with a culture of feasting, drinking, sagas and supercharged warriors. The burial contains its fair share of bottles, drinking vessels and weapons as well as enough evidence of the construction of a lyre for the musical instrument to be perfectly reconstructed. The next generation, Saexa’s nephews, seem to fit that Beowulf stereotype even more perfectly, once their father was dead, Saexred and Saeward reverted to paganism, expelled Bishop Mellitus and both died in battle.


Anglo-Saxon helmet from the Sutton Hoo ship burial at the British Museum

This really is a time we don’t know much about. The knowledge gleaned from the extensive finds at Prittlewell will help advance our scholarship still further. Knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon Kings took a big leap forward with the discovery in 1937 of the ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, now in the care of the National Trust. Saexa was a contemporary of Raedwald, King of East Anglia, the likely inhabitant of the Sutton Hoo burial, and they may have known each other. Like Prittlewell, Sutton Hoo contains a confusing mix of Christian and pagan objects. By far the most extraordinary object from Sutton Hoo is the famous helmet. Anyone who has seen it in the collection at the British Museum cannot help but feel they are looking into the face of an Anglo-Saxon warrior, all eyebrows and bristling moustache. It seems to me that the delicate little gold foil crosses found in the tomb at Prittlewell may give you a similar shiver down the spine. They were probably laid on the dead man’s eyelids in death. (Watchers of the Games of Thrones series will be familiar with this type of ritual, though they use coins in King’s Landing as was actually common all over the real ancient world). Somehow this detail helps you visualise the body in the grave more vividly and brings the King of Bling surprisingly close.



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