Inside the Broken-Back Seax: The Sittingbourne Blade With a Latin Inscription (Full Process)

Step inside the muddy waterway of the East Kentish town of Sittingbourne in the last decade of the 9th century AD and discover how an Anglo-Saxon blacksmith named Biorhtelm, working in the closing years of the reign of King Alfred the Great of Wessex, forged and finished a single-edged iron knife with a straight blade whose spine dropped in a sharp downward angle at roughly two-thirds of its length, inlaid two lines of silver script in the flowing insular half-uncial hand of Late Anglo-Saxon Latin writing along both flat sides of the blade, and delivered the finished weapon to a Kentish nobleman whose name he preserved for the next twelve hundred years in silver wire: Sigebereht. The Sittingbourne broken-back seax. This full-process historical documentary explores the metallurgy, the Anglo-Saxon literacy, and the extraordinary late 9th-century Kentish knife whose maker Biorhtelm signed his work in silver script alongside the name of his customer Sigebereht — the broken-back seax as it evolved in Late Anglo-Saxon England between roughly 800 and 1000 AD as a specifically English variant of the older Germanic seax family, distinguished from the earlier long seax by a dramatic angular drop in the blade's spine that concentrated point mass forward for thrusting, and best known today from the two extraordinary silver-inlaid examples now in the British Museum: the Sittingbourne seax with its Latin owner's inscription, and the Beagnoth seax from the Thames with its complete runic alphabet. Built with a single-edged forged iron blade between thirty and forty centimeters long, a distinctive angular drop in the spine at roughly two-thirds along its length, silver and copper wire inlay along the flat sides of the blade, a shaped wooden hilt attached to a narrow tang, and a horizontal belt sheath of wood and leather, the classical broken-back seax weighed between four hundred grams and eight hundred grams. Explore every major stage of Sittingbourne Broken-Back Seax construction, including: Smelting bog iron in an Anglo-Saxon bloomery furnace to produce workable iron Forging the single-edged blade with a straight lower edge and angled spine Grinding the finished cutting edge to a sharp bevel along the whole length Chasing shallow channels into the flat sides of the blade for the inlay Hammering silver and copper wire into the channels to form the inscriptions Fitting a shaped hardwood grip over the narrow tang for the hand Fitting the finished blade into a horizontal wood-and-leather belt sheath Blending Late Anglo-Saxon ironwork, the biscript literacy of a kingdom that wrote both Latin and Old English in the same generation as it wrote Anglo-Saxon runes, and the personal patronage that let a working blacksmith preserve his name and his customer's name in silver wire for twelve centuries, this video reveals how one signed Kentish knife survived to become one of the two most important named Anglo-Saxon blades in the world. The Sittingbourne seax is inscribed on one flat side with the Old English words "+ SIGEBEREHT ME AH" — "Sigebereht owns me" — and on the other flat side with "+ BIORHTELM ME þORTE" — "Biorhtelm made me." Both inscriptions are written in the insular half-uncial script of Late Anglo-Saxon Christian Latin writing, not in the older Anglo-Saxon futhorc runes. Its exact archaeological context has been reconstructed from 19th-century records rather than modern excavation. The Sittingbourne seax has been on display in the British Museum in London for more than a century. It is one of only a handful of Anglo-Saxon weapons in the world that names both the man who commissioned it and the man who made it. The broken-back seax as a form disappeared from English use in the century following the Norman Conquest of 1066. The names Biorhtelm and Sigebereht, along with the blade, survived. If you enjoy Anglo-Saxon England documentaries, Viking Age warrior culture, Kent archaeology, or full-process explorations of the named blades of Late Anglo-Saxon craftsmen, this cinematic walkthrough reveals how one silver-inlaid Kentish knife preserved a signed Anglo-Saxon smith and his named customer for a thousand years. 🔔 Subscribe to The Archaic Method for more Inside documentaries exploring ancient workshops, weapon engineering, and the full processes behind the weapons that changed history.