In 1867, Augustus Wollaston Franks donated a carved whalebone box to the British Museum. Called the Franks Casket, the box dates from the Northumbrian Renaissance— between 690 and 750 AD—and was probably created in a monastic setting, before it wound up in a shrine and then in a family home in Auzon, France, where it was used for some time as a sewing basket. In my personal opinion the Franks Casket is delightfully weird, and long overdue a dramatic Hollywood blockbuster centered on a medieval historian who decodes the secret message of the Casket and finds herself in a race against time, supernatural elements, and Nazis. Historically and culturally, the Casket is important because it is a blend of Roman, Christian, German and even Jewish influences that brilliantly demonstrate the interplay between those influences at the time the Casket was created.

See, the Franks Casket has intricate carvings and inscriptions on all sides. The front panel depicts the three Magi visiting the baby Jesus, a scene from the adventures of Weland the Smith (a figure from Germanic legend), and an Old English riddle about whales while the back panel depicts the sacking of Jerusalem. The other two sides show the suckling of Romulus and Remus by the she-wolf and two probably Germanic legends that to this day have not been satisfactorily identified. The inscriptions that border the scenes, and in most cases describe them, are written mainly in Old English in the futhorc (runic alphabet), but there are points where the inscription is in Latin in the Roman alphabet, and places that switch between the two, sometimes mid-inscription. In some spots the inscription even seems to be in code. Add in the fact that much of the Casket’s history is murky, and that its exact purpose is still unclear to historians (possibly a reliquary, or to hold an important book), and you have a fascinating, complicated, and very important piece of early English history.