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  Newsmakers   Tut’s dagger was ‘made from meteorite’

Tut’s dagger was ‘made from meteorite’

PTI
Published : Jun 3, 2016, 2:14 am IST
Updated : Jun 3, 2016, 2:14 am IST

The gold mask of King Tutankhamun is seen alongside a dagger found in the wrapping of his mummy in a composite image. The dagger is now confirmed to be made of iron from a meteorite. (Photo: AP)

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The gold mask of King Tutankhamun is seen alongside a dagger found in the wrapping of his mummy in a composite image. The dagger is now confirmed to be made of iron from a meteorite. (Photo: AP)

An iron dagger buried with Egypt’s King Tutankhamun was made from a meteorite, new research shows. Archaeologists and historians have been fascinated by King Tut’s mummified remains and the mysterious objects found in his tomb since their discovery in the 1920s.

Tutankhamun was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty (ruled c. 1332–1323 BC in the conventional chronology).

In the past, scientists have claimed that an iron dagger, found along with a gold blade in King Tut’s tomb, may have come from meteorites. Other ancient Egyptian iron artefacts have also been suspected to be meteoritic, since smelted iron was rarely used.

But now, researchers from Italy and the Egyptian Museum have used X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to accurately find out what King Tut’s knife was made of, according to an article published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.

They found its makeup of iron, nickel and cobalt matched other meteorites in a database, and “strongly suggests its meteoritic origin.” The authors said the Egyptians knew what they were using, CNN reported. “We suggest that ancient Egyptians attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of fine ornamental or ceremonial objects,” the article said. In fact, the authors say their findings may explain why Egyptians in the 13th century BCE referred to a new hieroglyph that translates literally into “iron of the sky.”

This, the researchers say, “suggests that the ancient Egyptians, in the wake of other ancient people of the Mediterranean area, were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky already in the 13th C. BCE, anticipating Western culture by more than two millennia.”

The dagger was found by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1925, three years after he discovered King Tut’s tomb. It was in the wrapping surrounding the right thigh of the boy king’s mummy and had a decorated gold handle with a pommel of rock crystal. Its iron blade was protected with a gold sheath decorated with a pattern of lilies on one side, feathers on the other, and a jackal’s head, the researchers reported.

The dagger is one of very few iron artefacts ever found from the ancient Egyptian culture, which isn’t thought to have developed iron smelting until the 8th century BC — later than neighbouring countries.

Location: Egypt, Kairo, Cairo