Thames scramasax

Seax of Beagnoth

The Seax of Beagnoth on display at the British Museum
Material	Iron (inlaid with copper, bronze and silver)
Size	Length: 72.1 cm (28.4 in) Width: 38.7 mm (1.52 in) Thickness: 8.2 mm (0.32 in)
Weight	985 g
Writing	Runic, Old English
Created	10th century
Period/culture	Late Anglo-Saxon
Discovered	1857; River Thames, Battersea
Present location	Room 41, British Museum, London
Registration	1857,0623.1

Coordinates: 51°29′03″N 0°08′38″W / 51.484202°N 0.143874°W / 51.484202; -0.143874

The Seax of Beagnoth (also known as the Thames scramasax) is a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon seax (single-edged knife). It was found in the River Thames in 1857, and is now at the British Museum in London. It is a prestige weapon, decorated with elaborate patterns of inlaid copper, bronze and silver wire. On one side of the blade is the only known complete inscription of the twenty-eight letter Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet, as well as the name "Beagnoth" in runic letters. It is thought that the runic alphabet had a magical function, and that the name Beagnoth is that of either the owner of the weapon or the smith who forged it. Although many Anglo-Saxon and Viking swords and knives have inscriptions in the Latin alphabet on their blades, or have runic inscriptions on the hilt or scabbard, the Seax of Beagnoth is one of only a handful of finds with a runic inscription on its blade.

Henry J. Briggs, a labourer, found the seax in the River Thames near Battersea in early 1857. Briggs sold it to the British Museum, and on 21 May 1857 it was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries of London by Augustus Wollaston Franks (an antiquary who worked at the Antiquities Department of the British Museum), when it was described as "resembling the Scramasax of the Franks, of which examples are very rare in England; and bears a row of runic characters inlaid in gold". Since then the weapon has usually been called the Thames scramasax; but the term scramasax (from Old Frankish *scrâmasahs) is only attested once, in the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, and the meaning of the scrama- element is uncertain, so recent scholarship prefers the term long seax or long sax for this type of weapon.