More Cool History News

Remains of Alfred the Great's granddaughter returned

• Tests expected to confirm woman lived in England
• Princess sent to Germany as diplomatic prize

The granddaughter of Alfred the Great came back to England yesterday – or at least fragments of a body returned, more than 1,000 years after the Wessex ­princess was packed off by her brother as a ­diplomatic gift to a Saxon king.

Tests in Bristol are expected to ­provide further proof that Eadgyth (roughly ­pronounced Edith) was indeed the woman found wrapped in silk and sealed in a lead coffin, inside a magnificent stone sarcophagus at Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany.

"Her brother Athelstan was the first king of a unified England, her husband became the first Holy Roman Emperor and her blood runs in the veins of every royal family in Europe," said Professor Mark Horton of Bristol University.

"Alfred's body disappeared long ago, bones of other members of her family are all jumbled up in Winchester Cathedral after [Thomas] Cromwell got his hands on them, so this may prove to be the oldest complete remains of an English royal."

There is no contemporary portrait of Eadgyth and few insights into her life. She was born in Wessex in 910 into one of the most powerful families in ­England, daughter of Edward the Elder, and half-sister to Athelstan, well on his way to being recognised as the first king of all England.