Single-Edged Knife (Scramasax) (600s): Art, History and Details

Single-Edged Knife (Scramasax) (600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The scramasax, a single-edged knife, was a general purpose implement. It could serve equally well as a tool or as a weapon and generally did not exceed 12 inches in length. As with most objects of the Migration period, iron weapons survive as excavated grave goods and tend to be heavily corroded. The grips, now missing, were probably fashioned from wood or bone and silver inlay decorated the pommels (the knob on the hilt, or handle). The ornamental gold foil bands, perhaps from the original scabbards (the cases in which the blades of swords or daggers are kept) have survived relatively intact.

Object facts

• Title: Single-Edged Knife (Scramasax)
• Date: 600s
• Culture: Frankish, Champagne(?), Migration period, 7th century
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: iron, copper, and gold foil
• Collection: MED - Migration Period
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1919.1014

A detail from the museum

Known as a scramasax, seax means knife in Old English.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms and Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Museum, 1998.
• Effros, Bonnie "Art of the 'Dark Ages:' Showing Merovingian artifacts in North American public and private collections." Journal of the History of Collections 17 no. I (2005).
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms & Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.