The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial

England’s “Tomb of Tutankhamun”

Sutton Hoo is an important archaeological site in Suffolk, England. It is the burial site of an early English king, and has been described as the English equivalent of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

King Raedwald of East Anglia

After the recall of the Roman administration of England in 410 AD, the land became open to settlement by tribes from the near continent, notably from what is now Denmark and northern Germany. One of these tribes was the Angles, who originated from what became the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, immediately south of the Danish peninsula.

The Angles settled mainly in what are now the English counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and would have been well established in the area before the reign of King Raedwald, who was probably king from 599 to 624.

By this time, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had come under the influence of Christian missionaries, most notably Augustine who had arrived in Kent in 597. Raedwald was the second English king to be baptized as a Christian, the ceremony taking place at the court of the first such convert, namely King Ethelbert of Kent, in about the year 605.

However, it would take a long time for the culture and practices of Christianity, as directed by bishops from…