Hove amber cup

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The Hove Amber Cup was discovered in a great round barrow mound which was crudely excavated in 1852, in Hove, East Sussex, England. The barrow was of exceptional size and quality, after the fashion of mid-Bronze Age finds which represent a new people who migrated to Britain just before 1200 BC. The Hove Amber Cup is one of only two found in Britain; the other was in Dorset. However, the two are not of the same style of craftsmanship. The Hove Amber Cup was found along with three other kingly objects (a Mycenaean-style bronze dagger, a whetstone, and a celt, all of which together suggest this was the burial of a king who had recently come to occupy a high status in Britain.

The original review of the excavation and its findings were written by Barclay Phillips. The cup itself would have been used to pour offerings of wine and blood onto the fire of a sacred hearth, probably to the goddess Diana-Artemis (as the legend portrays Brutus doing.) It is a prototype of the legendary Grail of Arthurian myth, being one of the four archetypal objects of sovereignty, or kingship, which correspond to the basic ideas and concepts contained in, and suggested by, the Tetragrammaton.