Third Known

Sale: CNG 75, Lot: 1397. Estimate $1000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 23 May 2007.  Sold For $2200. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANGLO-SAXON, Secondary Sceattas. Circa 710-735. AR Sceat (1.10 g, 12h). Series U, type 23c. Mint in the upper Thames region. Figure standing facing in crescent-shaped boat, holding two long crosses; small birds(?) flanking head / Bird standing right, pecking berries; foliage behind. Beowulf 102 (this coin); Abramson -; Metcalf -; William L. Subjack Collection (Vecchi 11, 5 June 1998), lot 86 (same dies); Gannon fig. 3.14 = EMC 1998.0100 (in Ashmolean Museum); North 83 var. (no birds on obv.); SCBC 793 var. (same). EF, toned. Third-known variant with birds on obverse.

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 imagry, with a bird standing in a vine-scroll, was a very common motif in Anglo-Saxon England representing salvation and paradise (Gannon, p. 117).