Sale: CNG 75, Lot: 1395. Estimate $750.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 23 May 2007.  Sold For $1100. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANGLO-SAXON, Secondary Sceattas. Circa 710-735. AR Sceat (1.03 g). Series U, type 23b. Mint in the upper Thames region. Figure standing facing, head right, in crescent-shaped boat, holding two long crosses / Bird standing right, pecking berries below; foliage (vine-scroll) behind. Beowulf 100 (this coin); Abramson U025; Metcalf 445-8; North 83; SCBC 793. Good VF, toned.

From the Beowulf Collection.

The obverse of this issue adopts the motif of Primary Series W (see lots 1363-4, above), but with the addition of a crescent shape upon which the figure stands. This crescent may represent a boat, and allude to the Church as a boat that offers passage to heaven, an early Christian metaphor that is related to similar ideas in pagan mythology (e.g. the Scandinavian myth of a boat to the Other World). Another possibility is that the type is an allusion to a saint who is traveling by boat (Gannon, p. 90). The reverse imagery, with a bird standing in a vine-scroll, was a very common motif in Anglo-Saxon England representing salvation and paradise (Gannon, p. 117).