King Tut’s dagger came from outer space

The iron in the dagger blade belonging to the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun is thought to be of meteoric origin.

Photo: University of Pisa

By Yaron Steinbuch

June 2, 2016
King Tut’s dagger was out of this world!
The dagger — buried alongside the pharaoh — was made with iron from a meteorite, according to a new analysis of the weapon’s composition.

In 1925, archaeologist Howard Carter found two daggers, one iron and one with a blade of gold, in the wrapping of the teenage Tutankhamun, who was mummified more than 3,300 years ago.

Researchers have been flummoxed for decades by the gold-handled iron blade with a rock crystal pommel, because the dagger’s metal had not rusted, and ironwork was rare in ancient Egypt, The Guardian reported.

Researchers, led by Daniela Comelli of the Polytechnic University of Milan, analyzed the blade with an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and found that its nickel and cobalt content “strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin,” the paper reported.

They compared the composition to known meteorites within about 1,200 miles around the Red Sea coast of Egypt and found similar levels in one meteorite — Kharga.

It was found 150 miles west of Alexandria, at the seaport city of Mersa Matruh, which in the fourth century BC was known as Amunia, the paper reported.

“As the only two valuable iron artifacts from ancient Egypt so far accurately analyzed are of meteoritic origin, we suggest that ancient Egyptians attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of fine ornamental or ceremonial objects,” the team that studied the knife wrote, according to the research published in the journal Meteorics & Planetary Science.

They noted that around the 13th century BC, a term “literally translated as ‘iron of the sky’ came into use … to describe all types of iron.”
And ancient Egyptians would have revered celestial objects, according to Joyce Tyldesley, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester.

“The sky was very important to the ancient Egyptians,” she told Nature. “Something that falls from the sky is going to be considered as a gift from the gods.”

The blade’s high quality suggests that King Tut, who lived during the latest stage of the Bronze Age, was supported by skilled ironworkers despite the material’s relative rarity.
The dagger may not be the only item created from extraterrestrial rocks in Tut’s tomb.

In 2006, an Austrian scientist proposed that an unusual yellowish gem — shaped as a scarab in Tut’s burial necklace — is actually glass created in the heat of a meteorite crashing into sand.

“It would be very interesting to analyze more pre-Iron Age artifacts, such as other iron objects found in King Tut’s tomb,” Comelli told Discovery News. “We could gain precious insights into metal working technologies in ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean.”