Tutankhamun had a dagger made of iron that came to Earth on a meteorite, scientists find

King Tutankhamun was buried with a dagger made from a meteorite, according to a new paper.

The ancient Egyptians that helped make it also probably knew that the material they were working with came from the sky, the researchers have said.

For years, scholars have speculated about whether ancient Egyptians worked with “meteoritic iron”, because the existence of smelted iron was rare. A lack of detailed analysis has meant that it has been difficult to know for sure what materials were used.

But the new research uses new technologies to show that the blade is meteoritic.

It also appears to show that Egyptians attached huge amounts of value to such metals. And they appear to have been skilled in fashioning them into objects like blades, the researchers claim in their article published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

The study might even explain a mysterious hieroglyphic term that translates into “iron of the sky”, which came into use around the 13th century BC. That is used to describe all types of iron but came into use around the same time as a text that appears to describe a meteorite.

That seems to suggest that ancient Egyptians were aware that the chunks of iron had made their way to them from the sky – meaning that their understanding pre-dated that of Western culture by two thousand years.

The research used X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to take a picture of what King Tut’s knife was made out of. It found that the combination of iron, nickel and cobalt were the same as other meteorites, suggesting strongly that was where the material had come from.

“As the only two valuable iron artefacts from ancient Egypt so far accurately analysed are of meteoritic origin, we suggest that ancient Egyptian attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of fine ornamental or ceremonial objects,” the researchers conclude.