This article looks at the importance of long distance connections between the English kingdoms and the eastern Mediterranean in the sixth to eighth centuries.

The relationship between the ship burial at Sutton Hoo – in the eastern English county of Suffolk – the people who discovered and excavated it, and what it can tell us about this crucial period of history continues to fascinate scholars. The tomb and its contents date from the first half of the seventh century AD. Most of the famous treasures were discovered within Mound 1, one of a series of burial mounds at the site, two of which were ship burials – Mounds 1 and 2.  Since Basil Brown led excavations in 1939 there has been speculation the individual buried there was one of a number of East Anglian kings known from two documents, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. From these it is possible to construct an East Anglian regnal list starting at the end of the sixth century...