Thank you for downloading this episode of a, tracking the rise of the Islamic Empire

and the reshaping of Middle Eastern politics after of the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

Today we're still in the seventh century, but I'm shivering in the chill of East Anglia,

at a place where, in the summer of 1939, poetry and archaeology unexpectedly intersected

and transformed our understanding of British national identity. series are, I hope, evocative of distant worlds. But some, like today's object, possess an

almost magical power to carry us into the past. It's a helmet. Its discovery was part of one of the great archaeological finds of modern times, and it speaks

to us across the centuries with a haunting intensity.

An embossed ridge, a band lapped with wire, arched over the helmet, head protection to keep the

keen ground cutting edge from damaging it when danger threatened and the man was battling behind his shield.

A history of the world in a hundred objects. The Sutton-Hoo helmet.

From the 7th century, found in Suffolk.

found in Suffolk. I'm in East Anglia, a few miles from the Suffolk coast and the wind is howling straight from the Urels.

I'm at Sutton who, where in 1939 one of the most important and most exciting archaeological discoveries in Britain was made.

It uncovered the tomb of an Anglo-Saxon who had been buried here in the early 600s,

and it completely changed the way we thought about what had been called the Dark Ages,

those centuries that followed the collapse of Roman rule in Britain.

I'm with Angus Wainwright, the National Trust's archaeologist for the East of England.

Angus, what can we see on the site now?

Well, we're standing amongst a number of large mounds high up on an exposed ridge looking down towards the river

Deeben. We're about a hundred feet up here and we're standing next to one of the biggest mounds

which we call it excitingly one, which is where the great ship grave was discovered

in 1939 and we've got about sort of 18 or 20 other mounds around us.

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