Pharaoh Tutankhamun ruled Egypt around 1332-1323 BC. A wonderful dagger was found in 1925 the wrapping of his mummified body. It has been recently analysed utilizing X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy by a team of Egyptian and Italian researchers, who then published a study showing that King Tut’s beautiful dagger is in fact been hammered out from a meteorite.
The study is entitled “The meteoritic origin of Tutankhamun’s iron dagger blade”, showed the dagger to be made mostly of iron, with small amounts of nickel and cobalt. This combination of elements points to a meteorite, a find unique because of the antiquity of the weapon – even if not so rare in general, as deposit of meteoric metals had been used throughout history. What is extraordinary is that Egyptians knew of the celestial origin of it and attributed a sacred value to it. This finding adds special meaning to the term “iron from the sky” which was a hieroglyph found in ancient Egyptian texts.
“The introduction of the new composite term suggests that the ancient Egyptians… were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky already in the 13th century BCE, anticipating Western culture by more than two millennia,” write Prof. Daniela Comelli, an associate professor at the department of Physics of Milan Polytechnic.
The researchers speculate that the metal is coming from the Kharga meteorite, which was found 150 miles west of the city of Alexandria, near the seaport city of Mersa Matruh (known as Amunia at the time of Alexander the Great).