In a new study, the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun’s iron meteorite dagger was subjected to chemical analysis in order to figure out how it was formed. The findings demonstrate that it was built using techniques that were not typical in Egypt at the time, which could support the interpretation of a letter that says the weapon was given to King Tut’s grandpa from afar. In 2020, scientists visited the Egyptian Archeological Museum in Cairo, Egypt, to conduct their research, which was published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. They used x-rays to better understand the concentrations of different elements in the antique blade and how it was manufactured.
While analysis revealed a mixture of iron sulfide (among other elements), the distribution of its constituents was the most intriguing aspect. The meteorite blade has a cross-hatched structure known as the Widmanstätten Pattern, which can be seen in the iron meteorite octahedrite alongside iron sulfide. The presence of this pattern in the forging of the knife, as well as intact troilite deposits, shows that it was forged using a low-temperature process at temperatures below 950 degrees Celsius (1,742 degrees Fahrenheit).
Furthermore, the findings suggest that King Tut’s space blade, which was buried with him and later recovered among his tomb’s spoils, had an unknown provenance. Its gold hilt appears to have been made with lime plaster, a type of glue that wasn’t employed in Egypt until much later but was common elsewhere. According to the researchers, this “indicates a foreign provenance, possibly from Mitanni, Anatolia, as suggested by one of the Amarna letters, which states that an iron dagger with a gold hilt was sent to Amenhotep III, Tutankhamen’s grandfather, by the ruler of Mitanni.”
The Amarna letters were unearthed on clay tablets beside the Nile River, one of which mentions an iron knife sent to Amenhotep III when he married the daughter of the King of Mitanni. It’s possible that King Tut inherited the dagger from his father, as it was passed down through the family and was created outside of Egypt. The extraordinary meteorite dagger’s extraterrestrial origins were first validated in a 2016 study published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, which used x-rays to prove that it was made from material from one of the Solar System’s oldest objects: an iron meteorite.
The extraordinary relic exemplifies the importance of decorations fashioned from meteoric iron. Filmmakers, we’d like to see Brendan Fraser holding a space knife if he returns to The Mummy franchise.
