Alfred Jewel

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.

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.

[8] 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,[9] as well as by the Ashmolean.

[2] The Alfred Jewel is about 2+1⁄2 inches (6.4 cm) long and is made of filigreed gold, enclosing a highly polished tear-shaped piece of clear quartz "rock crystal", beneath which is set a cloisonné enamel plaque, with an image of a man, perhaps Christ, with ecclesiastical symbols.

An animal head at the base has as its snout a hollow socket, like those found in the other examples, showing that it was intended to hold a thin rod or stick.

The back is a flat gold plate engraved with an acanthus-like plant motif,[8] or Tree of Life according to Webster.

[11] The use of relatively large cells of enamel to create a figurative image is an innovation in Anglo-Saxon art, following Byzantine or Carolingian examples, as is the use of rock crystal as a "see-through" cover.

In a paper published in 2014, Sir John Boardman endorsed the earlier suggestion by David Talbot Rice that the figure on the jewel was intended to represent Alexander the Great.

[30] The scene is shown in the famous 12th-century floor mosaic in Otranto Cathedral in southern Italy, with a titulus of "ALEXANDER REX".

[32] In the epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton (1911), King Alfred offers the Jewel to the Virgin Mary on the island of Athelney.

[37] The Inspector Morse episode "The Wolvercote Tongue" (1987) centres on the theft of a fictional Saxon artefact based on the Jewel.