X-ray analysis confirms that the iron of the dagger placed on the thigh of the boy king has meteoric origins.
King Tut was buried with a dagger made of an iron that literally came
from space, says a new study into the composition of the iron blade from
the sarcophagus of the boy king.
Using non-invasive, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, a team of
Italian and Egyptian researchers confirmed that the iron of the dagger
placed on the right thigh of King Tut's mummified body a has meteoric
origin.
The team, which include researchers from Milan Polytechnic, Pisa
University and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, detailed their results in
the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
The weapon, now on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, was
described in 1925 by Howard Carter, who three years before had
discovered the treasure-packed tomb, as "a highly ornamented gold dagger
with crystal knob."
Made of non-rusted, homogeneous metal, the finely manufactured blade
features a decorated gold handle. It is completed by a gold sheath
garnished with a floral lily motif on one side and with a feathers
pattern on the other side, terminating with a jackal's head.
Although it is generally assumed that early iron objects were produced
from meteoritic iron, such origin of the blade has long been the subject
of debate, and previous analyses yielded controversial results.
Now dramatic technological improvements have allowed the researchers to determine the composition of the blade.
"Meteoric iron is clearly indicated by the presence of a high
percentages of nickel," main author Daniela Comelli, at the department
of Physics of Milan Polytechnic, told Discovery News.
Indeed, iron meteorites are mostly made of iron and nickel, with minor quantities of cobalt, phosphorus , sulfur and carbon.
While artifacts produced with iron ore quarrying display 4 percent of
nickel at most, the iron blade of King Tut's dagger was found to contain
nearly 11 percent of nickel.
Further confirmation of the blade's meteoric origin came from cobalt traces.
"The nickel and cobalt ratio in the dagger blade is consistent with
that of iron meteorites that have preserved the primitive chondritic
ratio during planetary differentiation in the early solar system,"
Comelli said.
Comelli and colleagues also investigated the possible source of the iron blade.
"We took into consideration all meteorites found within an area of
2,000 km in radius centered in the Red Sea, and we ended up with 20 iron
meteorites," Comelli said.
"Only one, named Kharga, turned out to have nickel and cobalt contents
which are possibly consistent with the composition of the blade," she
added.
The meteorite fragment was found in 2000 on a limestone plateau at Mersa Matruh, a seaport some 150 miles west of Alexandria.
The study shows the ancient Egyptians attributed great value to
meteoritic iron for the production of precious objects, possibly
perceiving those chunks of iron falling from the sky as a divine
message.
The most ancient Egyptian iron artifacts, nine small beads excavated
from a cemetery along the west bank of the Nile tomb in Gerzeh and dated
about 3200 BC, are also made from meteoritic iron hammered into thin
sheets.
"It would be very interesting to analyze more pre-Iron Age artifacts,
such as other iron objects found in King Tut's tomb. We could gain
precious insights into metal working technologies in ancient Egypt and
the Mediterranean," Comelli said.
She noted that the high quality of King Tut's dagger blade shows that
iron smithing was successful already in the 14th century B.C.
The dagger blade is not the only celestial object found in the boy
king's tomb. His pectoral, or necklace, features an amulet scarab which
is not "greenish-yellow chalcedony," as Carter had noted, but Libyan
desert silica glass.
The glass was produced by the impact on the sand of a meteorite or
comet. Such natural glass exists only in the remote and inhospitable
Great Sand Sea of Egypt -- the Western Desert. In order to produce the
scarab, the ancient Egyptians would have had to trek across 500 desert
miles.
