Alberht is so obscure that for many centuries he was known only from a single statement in a late compilation of material. A reference derived from tradition can be found in the annal for 749 in the "Historia Regum", a mediaeval work possibly produced in part by Byrhtferth of Ramsey. In the annal, it is stated that "Hunbeanna and Alberht divided the kingdom of the East Angles between themselves". Until the 1980s, this record stood alone and unverifiable, with the exception of a single coin attributed to Beonna and two other brief mentions of him. Since then, well over a hundred coins attributed to Beonna have been found, many in archaeologically secure contexts, so that it is now clear that a ruler named Beonna did rule in East Anglia at that time, as originally suggested in 1905 by the English historian H. M. Chadwick. The historian Steven Plunkett has suggested that the "Hun-" element in the annal was at some time joined with the "-beanna" element in error by a scribe. Marion Archibald, a numismatist at the British Museum for 33 years, and the historian Dorothy Whitelock both asserted that the term "Hunbeanna" could be split into two separate names, "Hun" and "Beonna". Archibald acknowledges that nothing at all is known of Hun, noting that the name may a hypocorism for a person with a name beginning in "hun-" or ending in "-hun", whilst Whitelock partitions the kingdom of the East Angles between Alberht, Hun and Beonna.