King’s Tut Iron Dagger is Out of this World!
When the legendary tomb of King Tutankhamen was opened in 1925, archeologists found a foot-long dagger in a gold sheath. e hilt was also gold with lapis lazuli inlay. But what amazed them most was the ne blade of iron and nickel with a pinch of cobalt. King Tut ruled some 100 years before the start of Iron Age and iron smelting. How did he come to possess such a dagger?
Scientists long supposed the blade was craed from a meteorite, a supposition conrmed in 2016. anks to a reexamination, they now know just what sort of meteorite. A special type of X-ray analysis has revealed a composition and a Widmanstätten (cross-hatched) pattern indicative of an octahedrite iron meteorite. Writing in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, a team led by Takafumi Matsui (Chiba Institute of Technology, Japan) has also shown that it was likely forged and shaped at relatively low temperatures not exceeding 1,742°F. Higher temperatures would have destroyed or obscured the Widmanstätten pattern.
Correspondence inscribed in clay tablets indicate a ne dagger was given as a wedding gi to King Tut’s grandfather by the king of Mitanni, which was in Anatolia, or present-day Turkey. It’s believed to be the very same dagger. Was it from a meteorite that fell in Turkey? e story of King Tut’s iron dagger is still being written!