Thames scramasax
A single-edged iron knife inlaid with a complete 28-rune futhorc row and the name Beagnoth. It is the fullest runic alphabet surviving on an object rather than in a manuscript, and its middle is visibly out of order.
At a glance
- Alphabet
- Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
- Date
- 10th century
- Found at
- Found in the River Thames at Battersea, London
- Now
- British Museum
- Signature
- None given here. English, Frisian and Continental material is catalogued outside the Rundata tradition altogether; elsewhere a signature is left off only where we could not verify one. Either way the object is cited by name and findspot.
The text
Transliteration in the conventional runological form. Translations on this site are our own and deliberately literal.
f u þ o r c g w h n i j ï p x s t b e · ŋ d l m œ · a æ y ea · beagnoþ
Discovery
Why it matters
Every other full futhorc row survives in a manuscript, written by scholars copying an alphabet. This one was cut on an object by someone using it, which ought to make it the better witness to how the alphabet was actually ordered in England. Its 28 runes are the whole of the epigraphic futhorc: the row is complete, not short. Where it undercuts itself is the order: runes 20–24, ing, dæg, lagu, mann and eþel, fall into a sequence found in no other source, recovering only at ac.
Common misconceptions
Claims about this object that circulate widely and do not hold up.
The seax is often said to be missing a rune, on the grounds that the Old English Rune Poem covers 29 and this carries 28. The rune it lacks is ior, which Page classes a pseudo-rune, a character of the manuscript rows that turns up in no inscription at all. Counted against the runes anyone actually cut, the seax is a complete row rather than a defective one, and the 28-rune futhorc is a recognised stage of the alphabet in its own right.
The seax is sometimes taken as evidence for a rival English ordering of the futhorc. Page reads the irregularity differently, and the object supports him: the sixteenth rune is visibly small and squeezed in as an afterthought, having been missed, and the disordered stretch agrees with nothing else. This looks like a designer unfamiliar with runic writing rather than a competing tradition, unlike the Elder Futhark, where several independent witnesses disagree consistently.
Runes attested here (18)
Every dictionary entry that cites this object, with the reason it gives.
- UrFuthorc
A single-edged knife inlaid with a 28-rune futhorc row plus its owner’s name, Beagnoth: the fullest row surviving in an inscription rather than a manuscript. It is the best inscriptional evidence for the alphabet’s order in England, and a flawed witness to it: its runes 20–24 run in a sequence found nowhere else, and the smith made outright layout errors, squeezing in a missed s at the sixteenth position. Page suggests whoever designed the inscription was not comfortable with runic writing. The 28 runes themselves are a complete row; the one the poem has and this does not is ior, which no inscription uses.
- OsFuthorc
Shows this rune in its expected fourth position, confirming the English order.
- CenFuthorc
Sixth in the inlaid futhorc row.
- HæglFuthorc
The inlaid row shows the English double-barred form.
- IsFuthorc
Eleventh in the inlaid row.
- GerFuthorc
Shows the distinctive English form of the rune.
- EohFuthorc
Present in the row despite being of little practical use in writing.
- PeorðFuthorc
Present in the row, giving the shape if not the meaning.
- Eolh-secgFuthorc
Present in the row in its expected position.
- TirFuthorc
Seventeenth in the inlaid futhorc row.
- EhFuthorc
Nineteenth in the inlaid row.
- LaguFuthorc
Twenty-second in the inlaid row, which puts ing and dæg ahead of it where the rune poem does not. That is worth little as evidence: the position falls inside runes 20–24 of the seax, a five-rune stretch whose order matches no other source and is usually put down to the carver rather than to an English tradition.
- IngFuthorc
Present in the row.
- EþelFuthorc
Present in the row.
- DægFuthorc
Present in the row.
- AcFuthorc
One of the English additions present in the inlaid row.
- YrFuthorc
Present among the English additions in the inlaid row.
- EarFuthorc
Closes the inlaid futhorc row.
Sources
Full references on the sources page.