King Tut's dagger--a blade of meteroritic iron

[Ian]

A recent article (appended to this post as a PDF file) published in Meteoritic and Planetary Science makes a very strong case that a dagger found in King Tutankhamun's tomb in 1925 is actually made of iron from a meteor.

King Tut lived in the 14th C BCE at a time when Egyptian metallurgy was thought to be fairly rudimentary. Although iron ore was readily available to the Egyptians, there is no historical record of them smelting iron ore before about 500 BCE. Prior to that time, whatever iron they used appears to have come from meteors. As a result iron was even rarer than gold, and objects made of iron were reserved for kings and nobility.

King Tut's dagger is a magnificent piece of craftsmanship, with iron work that is much more advanced than suspected for this time. The picture below of this knife comes from the same article: it shows a double edged, symmetrical blade with a hilt of gold and rock crystal. The sheath is gold.

Not surprisingly, this dagger has raised substantial questions about the state of Egyptian metallurgy and iron work. The Egyptians of the time seem to have known the source of this iron, because they used an expression for it that means "iron from the sky."

The article is worth reading for its historical perspectives about Egyptian metal crafts in the time of King Tut--it also happens to be pretty solid scientifically for those who are into metallurgy. Here is the Abstract of the article if you don't want to download it:

Scholars have long discussed the introduction and spread of iron metallurgy in different civilizations. The sporadic use of iron has been reported in the Eastern Mediterranean area from the late Neolithic period to the Bronze Age. Despite the rare existence of smelted iron, it is generally assumed that early iron objects were produced from meteoritic iron. Nevertheless, the methods of working the metal, its use, and diffusion are contentious issues compromised by lack of detailed analysis. Since its discovery in 1925, the meteoritic origin of the iron dagger blade from the sarcophagus of the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun (14th C. BCE) has been the subject of debate and previous analyses yielded controversial results. We show that the composition of the blade (Fe plus 10.8 wt% Ni and 0.58 wt% Co), accurately determined through portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, strongly supports its meteoritic origin. In agreement with recent results of metallographic analysis of ancient iron artifacts from Gerzeh, our study confirms that ancient Egyptians attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of precious objects. Moreover, the high manufacturing quality of Tutankhamun’s dagger blade, in comparison with other simple-shaped meteoritic iron artifacts, suggests a significant mastery of ironworking in Tutankhamun’s time.

Ian.