Facsimile of the Alfred Jewel

Facsimile of the 'Alfred Jewel', one of the most celebrated objects surviving from Anglo-Saxon England, now kept in the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford . Drop shaped pendant with gold outer edging Inscribed +ÆFLRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN (‘Alfred ordered me to be made’), and gold animal head at pointed end. Painted figure under glass on the pendant. The jewel was ploughed up in a field at North Petherton, Somerset, in 1693. Made for the only English monarch known as 'the Great', is likely that the late 9th century 'Alfred Jewel' was the head of an aestel (pointer), used to follow lines of text in a manuscript.