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St Cuthbert's coffin
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St. Cuthbert's coffin is a wooden coffin opened during the Reformation in Durham Cathedral, dated to AD 698, the year of the death of Saint Cuthbert. Among other objects, still mostly in the Cathedral Museum, it contained the Stonyhurst Gospel. It is inscribed with Roman lettering and Futhorc runes with names of apostles and saints. The wood is much weathered, and many names are illegible. The runic inscription reads
- ihs xps mat(t)[h](eus)
The ma and possibly the eu are bind runes. The t is inverted. Then follows
- marcus
the ma again a bind rune, and
- LVCAS
in Roman letters, followed by runic
- iohann(i)s
and finally Roman
- (RAPH)AEL (M)A(RIA)
The names of Matthew, Mark and John are thus in runes, while that of Luke is in Latin letters. The Christogram is notably in runic writing, ihs xps ᛁᚻᛋ ᛉᛈᛋ, with the h double-barred in the continental style, the first attestation of that variant in England. The monogram reflects a runic variant of a partly Latinized XPS from Greek ΧΡΙCΤΟC, with the rho rendered as runic p and the eolc rune (the old Algiz rune z) used to render chi.