Dagger of Tutankhamen was made with material that came from space When he was buried, Tutankhamun had with him a dagger which was made with a very special material: meteorite. The discovery was made from the object composition analysis, found in the pharaoh's tomb.
Dagger of Tutankhamen was made with material that came from space
The analysis was done by a team of Italian researchers and Egyptian universities of Milan, Pisa and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, through an x-ray fluorescence, according to El País.
The dagger, which is now on display in Cairo, Egyptian Museum, was described in 1925 by Howard Cater, the man who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, as "a very ornate gold dagger." The dagger has a non-oxidized metal blade - something that has generated great curiosity given the age of the dagger - and is decorated with a golden handle.
The latest technological advances have allowed researchers to determine the composition of the blade: "The meteoric iron is clearly identified because of the presence of a large percentage of nickel," said Daniela Comelli the physics department of the Polytechnic University of Milan and lead author of the study .
The iron meteorites are composed mainly of iron and nickel, with smaller amounts of cobalt, sulfur and carbon. On the other hand, objects made from iron mined have a percentage of maximum 4% nickel, while the dagger Tutankamon is 11%.
"We have considered all meteorites found within an area of 2,000 km radius with the center in the Red Sea and we ended with 20 iron meteorites," said Daniela Comelli, adding that "only one, dubbed Kharga, presented a nickel content and cobalt possible consistent with the composition of the blade. "
The meteorite fragment was found in 2000 in a limestone plateau of Mersa Matruh, a port about 230 kilometers west of Alexandria.
The study also states that in ancient Egypt, the people attributed a great value to the meteoric iron and built various objects with this material, once considered as a divine message as it had originated in the sky.
According to Daniela Comelli, the Egyptians were able to forge iron with high quality in the fourteenth century BC.
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