![\"Weathered](\"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/westminster-abbey-roman-sarcophagus-saxon-abbot-2.jpg\")
The lid doesn\u2019t match. Someone recut it in the 10th or 11th century with a large Latin cross (the mark of an important Christian burial), and specialists spent 157 years trying to square the Roman coffin with the Christian lid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Workmen first came across the sarcophagus in 1820 and broke its lid into six pieces, yet it wasn\u2019t officially discovered and repaired until 1869, on the Abbey\u2019s North Green. Today it\u2019s on display in the Abbey\u2019s Queen\u2019s Diamond Jubilee Galleries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Victorian examiners described the skeleton as that of a man about 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m) tall and no older than 30, and the bones were later assumed to have disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in 2016, the sarcophagus was sent to a conservation studio, and when the lid was lifted, researchers with Pre-Construct Archaeology found a nearly complete skeleton inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n James Young Langthorne, a human bone specialist, determined that the man was between 35 and 49 years old and stood about 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m) tall. That\u2019s at least five years older, and roughly 2 inches taller, than the Victorian description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A bone sample was sent to the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, which dated it to A.D. 987 to 1052, \u201cconfirming that the reuse of the sarcophagus, and the associated remodelling of its cover, occurred in the late Saxon period,\u201d the Abbey said in an announcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rodwell\u2019s study also works out how the man was buried: his body was laid in a wooden coffin, covered in lime and set inside the Roman one. Around 1258, the sarcophagus was moved to the courtyard of the new sacristy built by Henry III.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No trace of the wooden coffin survives, but it \u201ccan only have been a timber coffin,\u201d Rodwell wrote in the study, as quoted by Phys.org<\/a>. It rotted away entirely over the centuries the sarcophagus spent buried in the sacristy courtyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The date range leaves two abbots of Westminster who fit: \u00c6lfwig, who was abbot from 993 and died around 1020, and Wulnoth, who died in 1049. A third possible candidate, Wulfsige, doesn\u2019t qualify because he left the abbey to become a bishop, Live Science<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have two viable contenders for the occupant of the sarcophagus,\u201d Rodwell said. \u201cWe do not know the date of birth of either. But either would fit equally well if we assume the Abbot was in his early twenties when the appointment was made and close to fifty when he died.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither an inscription nor a DNA test names the man, so his identity is a well-founded proposal rather than a proof. In the paper, Rodwell leans toward \u00c6lfwig but stops short of certainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe fact Aelfwig was already a monk of Westminster might favour him,\u201d Rodwell said.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bones found in a Roman sarcophagus at Westminster Abbey belong to a late Saxon man, very probably an abbot, who … <\/p>\n![\"Black-and-white](\"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/westminster-abbey-roman-sarcophagus-saxon-abbot-3.jpg\")
\u00c6lfwig or Wulnoth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n