Is this a Viking Magic Wand?

For decades the experts at the British Museum believed that this item, discovered at a woman's grave from Norway was just a hook used in fishing. However, new research suggests that it was her 'magic wand' and that it was deliberately bent to destroy its power.

The Times newspaper reported that this item, a 90 cm long iron rod, was first brought to the British Museum in 1894. British Museum curator Sue Branning believes that it was probably a magical staff used to perform 'seithr', a form of Viking sorcery predominantly practiced by women.

She told The Times: "These are magical practices, which we don't fully understand. It involves divination, prophecy, communication with the dead and making people do things. Our rod fits, in terms of its form, with a number of these rods that turn up in the 9th and 10th century in female burials. They normally take the form of these long iron rods with knobs attached to them."

The rod would have been 'ritually' destroyed in order to prevent the sorceress from rising from the dead, or to stop anyone else from using it. Branning adds, "When we hear about the Vikings we hear all about the powerful warriors, but now we know there were also powerful women. These women were very well respected, but they were quite feared as well. They may have been on the margins of society. You might not want to get close to them because they have this power. The sources we have describe them as wearing blue and black cloaks with gems attached."

Visitors to the British Museum will be able to see the artifact when the new Early Medieval Gallery reopens on March 27th. Click here to visit the British Museum website.

Medieval pendant found by boy, 4, on show at British Museum

A 500-year-old gold reliquary, beautifully engraved with the names of the Magi and images of Christ and St Helena, which was found by a four-year-old playing with his father's metal detector, has gone on display for the first time at the British Museum.

It would once have been brilliantly coloured, with enamel work filling in the letters and decoration, and may once have contained a relic of the cross. It probably dropped from the neck of some wealthy and pious person, and lay undiscovered in the field for half a millennium.

Click here to read this article from The Guardian

Church to sell 15th century chalice to British Museum for £1.3 million

A £1.3m sale of the Lacock Cup to the British Museum has been approved by a Consistory Court, with the judge appealing for battling villagers to make amends.

 During the rarely-held two-day hearing at St Cyriac’s Church, Lacock, the Rev Justin Gau, Chancellor of the Diocese of Bristol, gave permission for the sale of the chalice, which dates back to the 1400s and is insured for £2.2m.

 The origins of the cup, which has been on loan to the London museum since 1963, are uncertain, but it is believed to have been donated to St Cyriac’s Church by Sir Robert Baynard, of Lackham Manor, 400 years ago.

Click here to read this article from the Wiltshire Times

British Museum to host major exhibition on Ancient Rome in 2013

The British Museum will be featuring the ancient Roman world in an exhibition during the spring and summer of 2013. Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum will bring together over 250 fascinating objects, both recent discoveries and celebrated finds from earlier excavations. Many of these objects have never before been seen outside Italy. The exhibition will have a unique focus, looking at the Roman home and the people who lived in these ill-fated cities.

 This exhibition, running from 28 March – 29 September 2013, will be the first ever held on these important cities at the British Museum, and the first such major exhibition in London for almost 40 years.

Click here to read this article from History of the Ancient World

The Walters Art Museum Removes Copyright Restrictions from more than 10,000 Images

The Walters Art Museum announces the launch of its redesigned works of art website with the removal of copyright restrictions on more than 10,000 online artwork images through a Creative Commons license. In addition to being able to download these images for free, the site introduces a new look and feel, and enhanced searching, tagging and community collections features. The website now has additional information about the artworks, including nearly a century of history concerning exhibitions and conservation treatments. It is also substantially more accessible to users with disabilities due to its increased compliance with the United States government’s internet accessibility standards.

“By adding conservation histories and exhibition records to our works of art site, the Walters is demonstrating its belief that openness and transparency are key components to holding artworks in the public trust,” said Director Gary Vikan. “As an additional element to eliminating admissions fees at the Walters, the works of art site does away with barriers of access to the museum’s collection and allows a depth and quality of information on artworks that will appeal not only to scholars, but also to art enthusiasts, students and the casual online visitor.”

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Grisly Relics, Gorgeous Art

The wonderfully ghoulish "Treasures of Heaven: Saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe" in the British Museum Round Reading Room is a spaciously installed group of sometimes ravishingly beautiful Christian objects of devotion—sculptural metalwork, precious gems, enamels, paintings and carvings—and most of them conceal bits of rotted wood or decomposed flesh.

n his introductory catalog essay Arnold Angenendt makes explicit the assumption that led early Christians to venerate their dead co-religionists' "nails and hair, their teeth, and above all their skulls": "the dead are not actually dead." He notes: "The Early Christians remembered and preserved only Jesus's words and miracles"; relic worship marked a return to pagan practices. The missing link with this actual, gorgeous exhibition, however, is the concept of the effect of magic on the primitive mind.

Click here to read this article from the Wall Street Journal

Badge dug up in field is medieval treasure

A scrap of twisted silver found a few weeks ago by a metal detector in Lancashire will take its place among masterpieces of medieval art at the British Museum, in an exhibition opening this week of the bejewelled shrines made to hold the relics of saints and martyrs.

The badge made of silver found by Paul King, a retired logistics expert, is a humble object to earn a place in an exhibition called Treasures of Heaven, but it is unique. It will sit among gold and silver reliquaries studded with gems the size of thumbnails – or the sockets from which they were wrenched by thieves – once owned by emperors, popes and princes.

Click here to read this article from The Guardian

British Museum to host “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relic and Devotion in Medieval Europe”

The British Museum’s major summer exhibition explores the spiritual and artistic significance of Christian relics and reliquaries in medieval Europe. Featuring some of the finest sacred treasures of the medieval age, Treasures of Heaven: saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe will give visitors the opportunity to see objects from more than forty institutions, many of which have not been seen in the UK before, brought together for the first time.

The exhibition, which runs between June 23rd and October 9th, will largely draw on the pre-eminent collections of the British Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, and the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Rare loans from the Vatican, including from the private chapel of the popes, the Sancta Sanctorum, as well as from lesser-known European church treasuries will also be on display. A variety of objects such as manuscripts, prints and pilgrim badges will be exhibited alongside the relics and reliquaries themselves, adding depth and context to the exhibition’s examination of this critical aspect of European history.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Treasures of Heaven, Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, British Museum

Around 828, some Venetian merchants were in Alexandria on a mission. They made their way into the Coptic cathedral where the body of St Mark the Evangelist was preserved. Having somehow squared the custodians, the Italians slit open his shroud and carried the remains to a waiting ship. They covered them with pork to discourage Muslim customs officials from looking too closely, and sailed back to the Lagoon. “History records no more shameless example of body snatching, nor any,” as John Julius Norwich put it, “of greater long-term significance.”

In the Middle Ages, the dead were very powerful – not all of them, but those who had led exceptionally holy lives. This is the subject of a forthcoming exhibition at the British Museum: Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe. It will contain, among other sometimes grisly items, alleged fragments of the True Cross, the foot of St Blaise, the breast milk of the Virgin Mary, and the hair of St John the Evangelist (or at any rate, the sumptuously decorated objects made to house these things).

Click here to read this article from the Daily Telegraph

See also British Museum to host “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relic and Devotion in Medieval Europe”

More archaeological finds being report in UK, British Museum reports

Over 90 000 archaeological finds were reported to British authorities in 2010, the British Museum reports, which marks a significant increase over previous years. The growth has been credited to the efforts to make it easier to report finds to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), the British agency in charge of recording archaeological discoveries.

In 2010, 90,146 archaeological objects were recorded through the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), a 36% increase on 2009, and 859 Treasure cases, up 10%; the British Museum manages the PAS, and also administers the Treasure Act 1996.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net