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Alfred Jewel
The Alfred Jewel is an Anglo-Saxon artefact made of enamel and quartz enclosed in gold that was discovered in 1693, and is now one of the most popular exhibits at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It has been dated from the late 9th century. It was made in the reign of Alfred the Great and is inscribed "AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN", meaning 'Alfred ordered me made'. The jewel was once attached to a rod, probably of wood, at its base. After decades of scholarly discussion, it is now "generally accepted" that the jewel's function was to be the handle for a pointer stick for following words when reading a book. It is an exceptional and unusual example of Anglo-Saxon jewellery.〔Webster, 154, quoted; Object〕
== Function and commission ==
It seems to have been one of the precious 'æstels' or staffs that Alfred is recorded as having sent to each bishopric along with a copy of his translation of Pope Gregory the Great's book ''Pastoral Care'', saying in his preface to the book: "And I will send a copy to every bishop's see in my kingdom, and in each book there is an aestel of 50 mancusses and I command, in God's name, that no man take the staff from the book, nor the book from the church".〔quoted, for example, in John Earle, ''The Alfred Jewel, an historical essay'', 1901:34; Webster, 153-154〕 The mancus was a term used in early medieval Europe to denote either a gold coin, with a weight of gold of 4.25g (equivalent to the Islamic dinar,〔(Grierson 2007, p.327 )〕 and thus lighter than the Byzantine solidus), or a unit of account of thirty silver pence. This made it worth about a month's wages for a skilled worker, such as a craftsman or a soldier.
No other context is given in the preface, and no other use of the Old English word 'æstel' in the context of books is known, so it is concluded that it meant a small pointer. Other jewelled objects with a similar form have survived, all with empty sockets, such as a 9th-century example in gold and glass in the British Museum, found in Bowleaze Cove in Dorset (see below), and the ''yad'' or "Torah pointer" remains in use in Jewish practice.〔Object; parchment is ritually unclean for observant Jews, and the use of the scroll handles and ''yad'' avoid the need to touch it.〕 David M. Wilson sounded a note of caution as to the connection with Alfred, noting that "in a period when royal titles meant something, there is no royal title in the inscription".〔 However the commissioning by Alfred and the function as a pointer handle are taken as firmly established by Leslie Webster in her survey ''Anglo-Saxon Art'' of 2012,〔Webster, 154-156, and see Index〕 as well as by the Ashmolean.〔Object〕 Other functions suggested have been as an ornament for a crown, or as a pendant, though this would display the figure upside down.〔
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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