King Tut's Blade Made of Meteorite

space.com ^ | May 31, 2016 03:42pm ET | Rossella Lorenzi

[BenLurkin]

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.

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[BenLurkin]

[BenLurkin]

ping

[2banana]

I’m not saying it was aliens...

[Paine in the Neck]

Alan Ladd, as Jim Bowie, had such a knife made from a meteorite in The Iron Mistress.

[sportutegrl]

Also Sokka in Avatar, the Last Airbender.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Not uncommon in ancient times. Meteoric steel was discussed in “The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention.” I hadn’t heard of this before reading the book recently.

Wiki...Before the advent of iron smelting, meteoric iron was the only source of iron metal apart from minor amounts of telluric iron. Meteoric iron was already used before the beginning of the iron age to make cultural objects, tools and weapons.

[TexasFreeper2009]

interesting...

maybe there is a grain of truth in many ancient tales of weapons being given to great men from the Gods.

A weapon made from metal which fell from the sky might certainly be considered a gift of the gods.

[Oratam]

A blade made of meteorite is less impressive to me than the butt of that handle being made of plastic.

[Duchess47]

Incredibly beautiful craftsmanship. Thanks.

[FreedomPoster]

Especially when the blade would knick opposing blades made of the best metal known at the time, bronze.

[HombreSecreto]

Totally aliens.

[katana]

Egyptian glass. Mostly seen in small beads and roughly shaped tiny bottles. Museums have display cases full of it. But that size, shaped as a knife hilt, and of such perfect clarity would have been a real technical achievement in 1330 BCE.

[null and void]

Mostly seen in small beads and roughly shaped tiny bottles.

[SunkenCiv]

[Oratam]

It’s beautiful.

[Pelham]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin. Look, some moron put "callingartbell" into the keywords.

• King Tut's Necklace Shaped By Fireball [2006]
• Tut's gem hints at space impact [2006]
• Mysterious Egyptian Glass Formed By Meteorite Strike, Study Says [2006]
• Cray Supercomputer... Discover Origin Of Mysterious Glass Found In King Tut's Tomb [2007]
• Danish Bronze Age glass beads traced to Egypt [2014]
• The Strange Glass Born in Nuclear Explosions [2016]

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[Monkey Face]

Whoa. How cool is that? And the scabbard is beautiful!

Thanks, SC!

[SunkenCiv]

:’) My pleasure.

[Trumpinator]

I always wondered if the legend of Excalibur - being a sword drawn from a stone (or in another telling, drawn from an anvil) was a mythological telling of a sword made from meteorite iron? There is an American Indian legend of dipping stone tipped weapons into a porous meteorite so they can gain power - a water connection to Excalibur and the sword emerging from a lake.