(for images of Franks Casket, see Dr. Alfred Becker's website)

Franks Casket is another riddling visual object - even textual reference to whale bone plays on the material from which the object may have been made)
(may have been made in Ripon when Wilfrid was bishop)

- made of whale bone or ivory
- can be 8th-century creation or c. 1000
(8th-century date based on stylistic dating, which is problematic because later artists could deliberately archaize their creations)
- contains runes and Latin written in a variety of ornamentations
(keep in mind that runes can double function as text *and* decoration - and can dynamically interact with interlace)
- could have been a reliquary or a treasure box - it was a small private object
- represents a fusion of Roman and Germanic traditions
(Hos and Egil the Archer for the Germanic, Romulus, Remus and Titus for the Roman)
(adoration of the magi and Whelan the Smith bring the two together - this is one of the concerns of early Anglo-Saxon art)

- on lid is Egil the Archer, brother of Weland the Smith
- left side contains Romulus and Remus being nurtured by the wolf
(R & R appear all over the place in A-S art, commonly appearing in floor mosaics and also on coins)
- right side has Hos as she sits on the sorrow-mound, suffering in distress in that Ertae had decreed for her a wretched den of sorrows and torments of mind
- back: Titus's sack of Jerusalem in AD 70
- front: Weland the Smith and adoration of the Magi
- wolf seen as symbolic of the Church that nourishes the faithful

- Anglo-Saxon art doesn't like blank space - contains busy backgrounds both on sculpture and manuscripts

Many thanks to Catherine Karkov for the knowledge she generously shared.